Re: Isaac Deutscher's anecdote about the readership of Marx's Capital in the ...

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 8/7/03 9:54:38 AM Pacific Daylight Time, bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

> Okay, fair enough, I'm playing by your rules. You are correct, Melvin is
> some kind of socialist, and I should control my temper when posting.
> However, I am not putting anybody in my killfile, I do not have one, except
> in the sense that I block mails from certain verbally abusive individuals. I
> am giving "Melvin P.", whoever that is, the free choice of reading exactly
> what I say and responding to that, in which case I discuss it in a rational,
> sensible manner, or else getting no response at all. I try my best to write
> clearly and precisely, and if I fail, I try my best to correct it or I stand
> corrected by somebody else. But I cannot very well discuss with somebody who
> willfully misrepresents what I say, that is just a dialogue of the deaf, and
> we learn nothing new from that.
>
> Regards
>
> Jurriaan


I did not misrepresent what you wrote. Politics means that what you wrote is understood different by different people. I have a deep distrust of democratic socialist because of their history and my history and life experience. In the trenches matters always change and one quickly learns who is whom. You anger and passion does not create any discomfort for me on any level. You are a Red baiter and that is all right. What I wrote was meant to provoke the mean underlying theoretical grid of what you present. 

My democracy is a life force - praxis. I have pen and will travel. This California thing is exciting and dangerous. I will go to work because electoral democracy means contacting people and creating the next "infrastructure of battle." No matter who I end up working for, and I am not opposed to Larry Flynt, - although Arnold scares the hell out of me, my agenda is working class politics. Here is an opportunity - during an authentic political crisis, to fight to begin shaping a class program. This means food, shelter, clothing, transportation, medical care, educational issues, energy question and how one is to make "ends meet." 

I am not a socialist. I am a communist. This means that my approach to matters is from the standpoint of specific and definable changes in the material power of production that defines this specific juncture in history and the life of this country. Democracy means getting the police off my ass . . . .man.  Then eating and voting. I can miss a few meals because since retirement all I do is eat. I cannot afford to try and miss the bullet if I do not have to. I am not extreme or abusive in the context of the incarceration rates I must grapple with as a way of life. 

You want to hear real verbal abuse? Go to your local record store and listen to what ever rap record is the current best seller. What my 20 year old daughter plays ever freaking morning is so outlandish that I blush and I have had three wives and totally outrageous. 

Here is where I am at because you feel that screaming Stalin dishonors me, when the opposite is true in the real world of working class politics. The workers for many reasons of history tend to love "strong men." This in itself is part of the democratic tradition. Here is why Arnold in California can become a real political force. Now, Stalin - who I call comrade Stalin, - because the "ignorant masses" (quote) follow strong leaders, is 

"the bone in the throat of the communist - not socialist, movement that cannot be swallowed on spit up." 

The masses are not simply "ignorant" and the intellectuals smart. History unfolds from itself and then antagonism replaces contradiction. This is correct. We are at the first stage where the antagonism replaces contradiction. This happens because the polarity evolves to a stage where the internal bond - connection, is broken and a sector of the working class is hurled outside the active productive process and the connection that has been called the "point of production" no longer exist for a sector of capital and proletarians. Here is the secret of speculative capital. 

Here is what you do not understand Mr. J. Perhaps 800 different books and articles on economy and dialectics had to be read to understand this elementary approach to why class society move in antagonism. The historical literature of the communist movement had to be swallowed to be sublated. 

Here is my official position. A bone that cannot be totally swallowed - past the throat, or spit up has to be slowly dissolved and this is most painful, but it is all right. 

Mr. J, I understood what you wrote. You have not learnt the art of bone dissolution and are playing a very bad hand. It is you that is antidemocratic. 


Have pen and skills. Will travel. Low maintenance.