M-TH: Analysing Rethinking Marxism

[Gerald Levy]

Chris Burford wrote:

> Analysing Rethinking Marxism
> I was unhappy to see a criticism by innuendo from Jerry,
> of course of Louis Proyect, of LP's report of the 
> Amherst conference.

I made this criticism in public before, most notably and recently on
PEN_L. It boils down to the following: LNP denounced in public and in no
uncertain terms the RM conference before he even had a copy of the
complete schedule. By _no means_ could his ignorant statements be said to
be an "analysis."  It was more akin to his habit of "critiquing" authors
that he clearly hasn't read. 

(a separate scandal was the decision by _Sozialism_ to publish a "review"
by LNP of that conference since, as the record shows, LNP was already on
record in public and in writing trashing that conference months
beforehand. This was discussed briefly on PEN-L recently, but the
discussion was more-or-less cut-off by Michael Perelman who asked that
this subject not be discussed. I consider it a scandal similar, perhaps
worse, than the "Social Text affair").
 
> I dislike Jerry's habit, of which I have been a 
> victim too, of failing to name the individual when
> he is making a criticism not for the purposes of 
> avoiding a personal confrontation, but in order to 
> highlight attention to a personal confrontation, by 
> innuendo. If a criticism is to be made, it is better it
> is made directly in a form that the person can take on 
> board in principle. 

His name didn't need to be stated because most, and all those on m-int and
PEN-L, would have recognized who was being referred to. You did, didn't
you?

Thank you for bring-up this topic, Chris B. I'm sure others, like Jukka
and Chris S, will really appreciate it. :-) Who do you want to talk about
next? Adolfo? Mark Jones?

Jerry



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