The subject matter of the discussion, besides being of deep interest, is timely. True to the Marxian observation that, contrary to the law of bourgeois revolutions, the law, obedient to which the revolutionary movement of the proletariat acts, is to "criticize itself constantly; constantly to interrupt itself in its own course; to come back to what seems to have been accomplished in order to start over anew; to scorn with cruel thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of its first attempts; to seem to throw down its adversary only in order to enable him to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again to rise up against it in more gigantic stature; to constantly recoil in fear before the undefined monster magnitude of its own objects - until, finally, that situation is created which renders all retreat impossible, until the conditions themselves cry out: Hic rhodus, hic salta ! - true to that Marxian observation, the Labor Movement of America is today thoroughly criticizing itself.
Daniel DeLeon, As To Politics, 1907
Although I look a lot like Harry Hopkins (and am, like him, a man on none-too-generous welfare) I’m actually several shades more radical than the New Dealers. However, I’d settle in the short term (i.e., most of my remaining life) for some initiatives like the job-creation program; but advocating for unions, higher wages, etc. during Clinton and Bush has essentially cost me jobs and virtually gotten my ass kicked. If that sort of thing has worked for you, maybe I should take notes, but I suspect I’m not the only person to regret taking “radical” stands on issues — for purely pragmatic reasons.
As perhaps befits a totemic figure for the US Army, James Brown’s dancing was Italianate: that is to say scientific. When you see someone make themselves into a whirling contraption – they are becoming less than they were and less noticeable, and they know this; JB moved so well you didn’t notice he was “stepping”, not participating in genuine modernist gyrations; how can he, how can he, how can he conduct the Orchester while moving so precisely from place to place and snapping his fingers? Ultimately many try, but those moves were “of a piece” and of a time – there is no “Maceo Parker of Attica” and nothing to do but watch and learn and try.
I intend to discontinue The Fortunes of the Dialectic, as I discontinued my previous web site “OpenSentence” in 2005, at this point. Initially a piece of Popery, the title later came to refer to many things: the fruits of genuine intellectualism, a Fred Astaire movie, una economica populare, life outside cars, “star systems”, and the results and upshot of Hegelian dialectics: however, when one is within “spitting distance” of sobriquetization, one ought to consider “other opportunities”. Including, I suppose, a return to genuine pseudonymity by a man who could, in truth, neither be Jeffrey nor “Jeff” Rubard: there was at least one of the former before, and the “pronoun of laziness” concealed derailed memory traces. I live and breathe, not too comfortably but comfortably within the law; we are now able to hold our elected officials and their bureaucratic “minders” to promises and reasonable expectations, and I have said much more than I hoped to, wanted to, or ever thought possible on a number of things (tho’ unstitching the joys of Kipling may just have been too damn much). It is one country, though we stand in disunity: and like the Spinners, I’ll be around: unlike the Spinners, I was never committed to wax, including poetic, and the Prosa der Welt suffices. Be seeing you.
