: : : Qx: This seeems to be nothing more than a crass outpouring of irrational resentments at people who more likely than not are not even socialists. : WW: No. It's quite rational.
: Qx: Uh-oh...just saying so doesn't make it so.
Your use of the word "seeems"(sic) in your first whine indicates your own uncertainty - you'll just have to trust me.
: WW:It comes from experiencing the vain, intolerant, and presumptuous attitudes of people who call themselves socialists (whether or not they know what what socialism is) and concluding that their isolation from the majority of working people is self-imposed.
: QX: Then perhaps you could count yourself as one of them.
No. I consider myself a Marxist (still learning) worker but I am not a socialist in the activist or academic sense of the word - I'm not a "semi-professional " or a "professional" socialist. I think a lot of these folks have a negative attitude toward white american working people - we're just "Joe six-packs" to them. But these guys aren't the only ones - the entire left seems to have this attitude. And when they really want to get down and show how bad-ass they are they call us fascists, racists, imperialists, etc. I think this is a loser strategy and it pisses me off.
: WW: I think socialists like Quincunx and Lark are fine examples of this negative attitude toward working people in general, white american, male workers in particular.
: Qx: You think? I doubt that you've even been doing that critically.
You're right, not critically. But you two remind of the kind of people who ask me if I'm in the Klan because I have a Southern accent - always assuming the worst. And you both write like elitist whiners, especially you, always demanding documentation. God forbid if working people just talked!
: WW: But it's not limited to these two hacks.
: Qx: Sure we'll get a third hack to help everybody out with bilious diatribes of sanctimonious conceit.
Thanks for the memories.
: WW: For example: the New Unionist printed an article a couple years back which opposed affirmative action. It then went on to assume that the vast majority of people who oppose affirmative action are "racist, sexist, macho,..." Different from those were "A few, including New Unionists" who opposed affirmative action out of purer motives. But most working people know and understand how destructive competition for jobs is - they know when they are being played against each other. If the New Unionist understood that affirmative action was a scam, why did they assume that other working people didn't.
: Qx: Please provide a reference as to what issue that was and if there's even a URL hyperlink then go ahead and provide that too. Right now you're using it as a silly weapon. (*hint-mumble velocity)
As you wish master: "Affirmative Action: Who Wins?" by Tom Dooley. New Unionist. July, 1995 No. 216. Shall I draw your bath too?
: WW:Another example: Winslow prefers an affinity group strategy (as opposed to unions) so Quincunx calls him a "phony, capitalist newspeaker who doesn't care about the world".
: Qx: And yet another example: Winslow types out pretty things that get some people fooled but shows his real self later on.
Tough shit for you. Get thicker skin.
: WW:(Incidently, I am baffled as to why Quincunx, who obviously holds to the axiom that "the emancipation of wage-workers is the task of wage-workers themselves", would label attempts at extension and expansion of wage-workers' self-activities as supplementing capital's acts at fragmenting wage-workers.
: Qx: More accurately I have doubted your authenticity by noting as before that you're using a straw man. If anybody else had written what you had written here I would see it as coming from someone who is authentic in their desire to understand and make sense of capitalism and the alternatives. Coming from you it's pretty obvious that you have a lot of maturing to do.
Doubting my authenticity? Because I'm a white male american worker who isn't in the least intimidated by your cheap, elitist shakedown tactics? You haven't answered the question and you are using ad hominem to get around it.
: WW: Go figure. Quincunx would do better to read Stan Weir or the history of the Kamunist Kranti/Collectivities group in Faridabad, India) Or how about Lark's use of words like "fascist" and "racist" when some libertarian type disagrees on an issue like gun control.
: Qx: Wow!! You must really have a hate-on for Lark and I. Actually we've disagreed heavily on the issue of Kosovo and if I really needed to brush up on leftists groupings in India I would just have to talk to my next door neigbours from Kerala and not try to go to a book for a source of social gospel. It's probably a good book but you seem to do it a disservice by using it as a reference.
Kammunist Kranti/Collectivities explicitly reject Leftism. Their "termite" strategy has succeeded in opening up a space for genuine worker discussion in an industrial city of 300,000. Why aren't your neighbors in Kerala? I hear many positive things about Kerala.
: WW: I consider it the height of vanity to assume that someone doesn't care about the world because they disagree with your position.
: Qx: And by considering it the height of vanity you have missed the point. I doubt that you really care at all and part of your reason for posting here is to vent your misdirected rage at anybody who challenges you.
It is your doubt that is misguided. I generally direct my rage at people who rage at me first, as in your case. But just because someone is an asshole to you, it doesn't entitle you to generalize it and say "they don't care about the world". More vanity on your part.
: WW: And I think most socialists have no one to blame but themselves for their marginalized existence. It seems they want it this way.
: Qx: Then you should do some reading about Americanism and how you arrive at this atrribution is quite pathetic.
I think the "Left" condemns itself to isolation when it alienates working people. This is truly pathetic. I'll try to read the book someday, although Chomsky is a bit pedantic.
: WW: Red Deathy, on the other hand, is one cool cat.
: Qx: Hey! I though you had posted earlier that you would quit kissing ass.
I can't help it - Red Deathy kicks ass.
: P.S.: Explain these little ditties you typed out a while back.
Later on I will.
