[lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:45:27 -0700
You'd probably also find the Guardian debate between Hitchens and Amis (both
Leftists and both Marxists) tiresome. Also, the Marxist Edward Said does
an objectionable thing as well. He assumed that Religion played a minor
roll in the "so-called" terrorist activities. What was at work was more
proletarian revolts of The Wretched of the Earth variety. Leftist/Marxist
intellectual after Leftist/Marxist intellectual is being outed by Horowitz
and the patterns are similar. Their ideologies were firmed up during the
Vietnam period. Their hatred for America was well established. When the
Terrorist business came along they didn't really believe the US propaganda
that claimed it had a religious base. What they saw was too much like the
Wretched of the Earth they were familiar with in Latin and South America not
to mention Algeria (which was the focus of Frantz Fanon's book). And so
they support those Wretched (aka proletariat) and didn't believe that they
are being inconsistent.
How much must one study the writings of Marx or Qutb before one is
considered a Marxist or a Qutbist? How pure must the revolutionary rhetoric
be or how pure the suicide-bombing before one is a legitimate Marxist or
Qutbist? Apparently not too much or too pure before writers feel free to
use these terms. Thus I am only the proximate and not the root cause of the
tiresomeness you object to.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 11:00 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago
Lawrence wrote:
> But back to your quibble: does the term "Root Cause" really fit Qutb's
place
> in Islamism? Well, let's look at how Mike intended the term "root cause."
> He didn't specify, but I took him to be using the old Leftist idea that
> Capitalism causes proletarian revolutions, and the "so-called" Islamist
> unrest is at root just such an one.
It's really tiresome that you persist in conflating 'Leftist' with
'Marxist.'
Moreover, few Marxists (and they were the fringe) after the early 1940s
believed in this sort of simplistic historical inevitability. (Classic
Marxists
believed that the revolution of the proletariat could only take place
in highly
industrialized nations where there were sharp worker/capitalist
distinctions;
that the Revolution first took place in marginally industrialized Russia
revealed the problem with this 'scientific' claim.)
Robert Paul
Reed College
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