Rosa Lichtenstein

Your attempt to play “right-back-at-ya” with Robert Conquest’s book is a good example. Conquest, a right-wing academic, happily tells of communist “atrocities” in the same way you do. Fortunately, some of us can sort out the truth from these stories of unrelieved ‘red terror’ — I certainly do not condone, for example, the decimation of the industrial workers of Wuhan, nor the silencing of Chinese Trotskyists, but I am not prepared to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater” and deny that the socialization of property relations in the PRC has brought tremendous benefits to its people. And I will happily support the PRC against assaults by the real imperialists of the US and its allies.

But you have still not answered my major question regarding your guru, Tony Cliff — Was it mere coincidence that Cliff, prior to 1949 a good Trotskyist, suddenly came up with his ‘ÃÂ*nter-imperialist war’ theory at precisely the time when anti-communism was at a high point n the UK, thus conveniently indemnifying himself from persecution by the UK capitalist state?

When the German Social Democrats voted with their own bourgeoisie to march off to the Great War in 1914, Lenin rightly called them ‘traitors.’ Cliff didn’t even deserve that name — he was just an anorak.

[For those of you unfamiliar with this UK slang term, an ‘anorak’ — besides being a garment — is the type of person who comes to a rally with a sign reading ‘Save the Whales.’ Upon being told, “That’s not what we’re here for,” simply crosses out ‘Save the Whales’ and scrawls ‘Smash the BNP’ on the same placard.]

From this capitulation came the Cliffite ‘theory’ of state capitalism, and the salivation over the collapse of the USSR. From it also came the affection for Solidarność — the ’trade union’ paid for by the Vatican and the CIA, which re-opened the gates for anti-semitism and misogyny in Poland — and, presumably on the ground that if one can support one gang of religious nutters in the name of ‘the oppressed,’ one can support them all, the support for shar’ia courts and all that they imply, especially for women.

And the post that inspired your dummy spit was not in a public forum — it was in Louise Michel’s message-board? Do you routinely haunt other people’s message-boards and comment on the posts of third parties? Nothing to me, but still…[FONT=&quot][/FONT] [FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

Congratulations on your 12000th post

Haha!
Thanks Rosa, I'll try and join that now.

Hm, ok, fair enough.
It's strange, not many people on here seem to like continental philosophy..

Thanks anyway

Why you don't think that the issues he presents are serious issues.
Why you think Wittgenstein avoids the problems Derrida presents.

Yes, I gathered that from your posts, but can I ask why?

Hey Rosa,
Can I just ask what you honestly think of Derridas' work? It's just that I know you like to use Wittgenstein a lot, and the two seem strangely similiar to me; so I wondered what you thought of it, or at least how you would attack it?

oh really?