1
Dear All,
While I can't disagree with Franklin's suggestion that we return to
trying to develop RD's work on DOP, I think our recent debates have
high-lighted such radically divergent interpretations of Hegel, Marx
and Marxist-Humanism that progress on continuing where RD was going in
her last years would be all but impossible without discussing it in
close relationship to the themes that have come out recently around the
question of "what happens after?" In light of any objective judgment
about the outcome of these debates and, frankly, what has been exposed
in critiquing Peter's co-organizer's report (as well as Pt. 3 of DP), I
can't entirely agree with Terry that Peter is such a "Master" or even
with Franklin that "Peter is good at getting us to argue on his ground, and even if we
don't, diverting from what we've said."
Also, I would like to clarify my critique of the DP (Part 1): My critical point was not "the human
costs of war": It was an attempt to expose the DP's exclusive focus on the geopolitics (not as
unconnected to but--quite the opposite--as the outcome of the non-dialectical, non-humanist
philosophy that had been substituted for RD's Marxist-Humanism) with no attention to the effects
on the Iraqi human population of the occupation, the prolongation of which amounted to a policy
of genocide, given the nearly 30 year history of the Hussein regime, war with Iran, and 2 U.S.
invasions.
And, while I think Franklin's idea of asking the REB to issue a post-plenum bulletin is
worth considering, no one has yet raised for discussion a crucial issue about the last
bulletin the "REB issued". Since when does a co-organizer (who is routinely alloted huge
organizational time and space for his own views) have the right to privately read all the
contributions to a discussion bulletin and then proceed to write his own piece in response,
as the final word to that bulletin? Unless I'm missing something here, this was
unprecedented and profoundly non-Marxist-Humanist.
Final