From owner-marxism-international  Tue Apr 22 00:05:58 1997
From: christi-ann@juno.com
Subject: M-I: Marxist Stand-Up
Message-ID: <19970422.000449.11575.2.Christi-Ann@juno.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 00:02:50 EDT

Ah, well, what do you know.  The RMC has now branched out into comedy. 
How fitting.

>Christi-Ann: You are not the only one laughing at us: the >whole world
is! We are SO FUNNY....

Oh, you guys are a riot, all right.  You should be on Comedy Central.

>They all

>1. Find our text very funny (the nervous laughter of the >petty
bourgeois in the presence of ideas)

Actually, it's the hearty laughter of those of us whom you claim to
represent, but who actually know you wouldn't recognize anyone in the
working class if they came and hit
you over your heads with their lunchboxes.

>2.They all present to us their own credentials as >Marxists ("I believe.
... in my heart of hearts")

Since it was a well known fact that Marx often times had no money to pay
for rent, food, medical bills, and funeral expenses (as he himself
wrote); and that if it wasn't for Engels bailing him out so often he
would have starved to death,  gives the working class more Marxist
credentials than a couple of grad students in a cushy university.

>4.They all say our text is unreadable (but its >unreadability in no way,
it seems, prevent our critics >from responding to it!!!!)

I don't have to drink a bottle of poison to know that it'll kill me.

>5. They all tell us what good activists the writers are >(the zone of
REAL politics)

So, tell me, what have *you* done outside of writing to improve the
station of the working class?

I'm waiting...


>7, They find gaps in our logic (in the very text that >they say is
"unreadable"). 

Well, maybe, just maybe, don't you think that it's those very gaps in the
logic that help make it unreadable?

>11. They all begin by going on about how how stoop-id we >are but end up
saying we are "intelligent people."  This >incoherence is the core
strategy of a centrist comprador >that treats everything as a "deal".

You probably are very intelligent, most graduate students are.  But
intelligence doesn't protect one from making errors; Ptolemy was
intelligent, but he thought that the sun and the planets revolved around
the earth.

>12. They say we do not reach anyone and yet try very hard >to protect
their constituency from us.  In fact most of >these texts are written not
to us but to the various >writers own constituencies in whose eyes they
have lost >credibility.  The attack on us is simply a way of gaining
>credibility with their (former?) clients in the academy.

Really?  I don't recall anyone trying to hide my eyes when one of your
posts showed up on my computer screen.  Plus, I find your argument about
the writers' constituencies very hard to believe, since I don't see any
of these authors posting to the list saying that they have been
misconstrued.

>13. They advise us to "learn" from them--"hit the books"

'Hit the streets' would be a better term.  All the writing in the world
will not replace going out and 'walking the walk', if you want to know
what's really going on.

>14.  They say: you have not read the book you are writing >about , have
you?  If we say, "yes" they say , you have >mis-read it, if we say "no",
they say: I told you so (the >game of the deal-er)

This one I will give you.  From what I've read of Marx, it is in places
somewhat vague, and lends itself to all sorts of interpretations, which
have led to every sectarian group and tendency imaginable.

Somehow, I have a feeling that if Marx were alive today, he'd want to
tighten up those loopholes.  Having several different groups claim that
they are the sole souce of Marxist truth has probably got him spinning in
his grave.

>6. They laugh some more and reassure us that they have >found us funny.


No, it's your approach to marxism that's so laughable.

>8. They laugh some more (it looks like that whenever they >cannot
understand something they just find their own >ignorance quite funny).
>9. They laugh some more.
>10. And they tell us we are funny
>15. They say we are very funny

See the response to #6


>We find all these texts quite sad: grown men and women >who are thrown
into an identity crisis under pressure >from a critique.  

I'm not having an identity crisis because of your 'critique'; I know I'm
working class, and unless the revolution takes place pretty soon, I'll
die working class.  You are the ones having the identity crisis, by
calling yourselves 'revolutionary' and then being found out as the
academians you are.

>Grown men and women who have "selected" Wood (thinking >that by choosing
her they have, once and for all proven >their radical credentials) only
to see that that choice
>looks more like the choice of a comprador tied to more >trade with
Monthly Review and its bankrupt agenda.

Since when is objectivity 'bankrupt?'  We need more objectivity, and
fewer mindless 'tendency zombies' shoving their journals in our faces. 


And on a related note, here's a gem from a previous post...

>Christi-Ann performs the usual liberal ritual of >denouncing and
distancing herself from the macho, the >sexism, and the outright violence
which has been >unleashed upon us from the very beginning (all under the
>guise of "response") and then-- in a double move-- taking >back all her
objections by confirming all that she has >questioned: "It is damn
funny..."  Funny indeed!  

It IS funny, because, unlike you, I can see the folly and satire inherent
in the original post. Life is not all somberness, wearing sackcloth and
gnashing teeth.

And until I start seeing news reports of two or three graduate students
in Buffalo being attacked by an angry mob of mailing list subscribers,
I'd think twice about calling responses to your posts 'violent'.


Christi-Ann

Love must be tried and tested and proved.  It must be tried as
though by fire.  And fire burns.
--  Dorothy Day


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