Re: Feedback from Leo Panitch, plus my reply

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, the criticisms of SR are at least substantive and specific, which is more useful than label-pasting. I don't think you can blame Leo for pre-Leo aspects of SR, though, and I don't think that Cuba and the Sandinistas are shibboleths for people interested in serious change. Nothing wrong with interest in them of course, but they are not more  (or less) worthy of attention than England or Brazil or Russia or the US, in my view.

 

 In fact SR, under Leo's co-editorship, has paid very serious attention to political struggles all around the world. My own criticism would be that it is too area-studiesy and not theoretical enough! (I liked the old incarnation of NLR, before the Change in 2000, and the older issues of SR,w hen Ralph Miliband had a bigger hand in it.)

 

However, if you want to criticize Leo's views, you should look to what he has written rather than what he had edited. His specialization is labor struggles in the social democratic countries, if I recall correctly. I have at least one of his books, but haven't read it in a while. I don't see why that disqualifies him as a person interested serious social change.

Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Justin Schwartz:
> >I don't even know what these labels mean any more. Do you mean that he's
> >not really opposed to capitalism, he just wants a nicer version if it,
> >while you are realy really opposed to it, but not in the bad
> >marxist-Leninist way? This sort of sterile chitchat is part of why I don't
> >thing it's useful to use the old labels. The glue is worn off and they
> >won't stick; they don't tell us anything useful. Leo will certainly tell
> >you that he is utterly opposed to capitalism and considers himself to be a
> >pretty classical Marxist (whatever that means). I think that it is more
> >useful and explanatory to talk about concrete views and arguments than to
> >try to find the right magic words. jks
>
> I think the fact that SR has never had a single article about Cuba in the
> thirteen years that I have been reading it, plus I suspect the preceding 26
> years indicates that they are interested in the idea of socialism, but not
> particularly in the living struggles of people to construct just such a
> system. Nor did they take any particular interest in the Sandinista
> revolution, or the Central American revolution in general which was one of
> the most significant challenges to capitalism in the past 20 years or so.
> Except for a couple of articles by Carlos Vilas who tends to useful but
> ultimately bloodless analytics of the region, one could not learn much
> about struggles that had more to do with socialism than a ton of other
> articles about socialism in general. Anyhow, that's my opinion.
>
>
>
> Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

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