Re: rules of debate

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 24/05/01 15:02 -0700, you wrote:
> I do not want to call a halt to this debate.  A good number of people seem
> to be interested.
>
> But, I am worried when a discussion centers so much on personalities
> rather than ideas.  Whether somebody is an academic superstar or a naive
> Trotskeyist or any of the other names that have been thrown about is
> irrelevant.  If Wood or Brenner or Proyect or Devine or even Perelman made
> a mistake, fine, pointed it out.  Their motives, however, are irrelevant.

While I support the moderator's draconian policy on etiquette, I think the
better way to deal with stimulating controversy is to expect contributors
to go straight to the differences.

Broadly there seems to me to be an overlap in comments by people such as
Justin, Leo, and Louis about what the argument is about. The passion is
related to its significance.

As Louis wrote

> At 24/05/01 10:14 -0400:
> Furuhashi:
> >Brenner can't be in support of both stagism & "socialism from below"
> >at the same time.
>
> What on earth are you talking about? Brenner was connected with the
> Analytical Marxist current before it gave up the ghost. These people, G.A.
> Cohen et al, are Second Internationalists in cap and gown.

The argument is about whether the fight against opportunism is central to
finding a way ahead;

whether the danger is only of right opportunism, or whether if there has to
be a fight against opportunism, there has to be a fight against left
opportunism too.

How far 'marxism' can emerge as 'Marxism' through a relentless purely
theoretical fight against opportunism and revisionism or whether it needs
to arise in the course of discussing current political practice.

Or whether reading these implications back into historical research
unacceptably distorts the whole nature of historical study.

Whether dogmatism is also a form of opportunism and revisionism.

And how much one of the characteristics features of opportunism, as in
Lenin's view, is its elusiveness.


That does not of course obviate the rules of debate, but it may help people
avoid being too stung by what they experience as personal attacks.


Chris Burford

London