cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/58586
Reviewing the fallout over Gabriel Rockhill’s critiques of Western Marxism, Donald Parkinson argues the controversy is ultimately a battle over what kind of intellectual culture the left needs.
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Yeah I’m not a big fan of Rockhill generally, but more because he seems less intensely studied in his subjects than a Losurdo. I have the same critique of Vijay Prashad (though with him i also have strong ideological disagreements). I won’t shit talk or argue against Rockhill though, it just feels like his oeuvre is a bit more aimed towards newbies to MLism and I am a bit allergic to hollowness. But I’ve been spoiled by the likes of Lukasc and Losurdo. But I don’t recommend random people to read Losurdo, and I likely will about Rockhill
Oh yeah, I meant to ask about your ideological disagreements with Prashad, too.
I think i likely overstated them a tad, just that I have yet to find any ideological disagreements with Rockhill (possibly for lack of reading him much) and have meanwhile found Prashad odd in his inspirations/associations. In one of his books he praises Brezhnev as his like ideal leader and that just seems pretty weak on understanding revolutionary potential, and he has praised Chomsky on many occasions, which reads to me as either opportunism or some liberalism towards western academics that I can’t be on board with. I think this couples to his ‘I’m just a Marxist, not any specific sect’ shtick.
But generally he’s good and I have no trouble discussing him positively! I just am wary of his standpoints when I think on his heros.
Well, that’s eyebrow-raising.
Brezhnev, in fact, is very fondly remembered in the former USSR.
I’m definitely influenced by Western propaganda here, as I’m mostly familiar with the gerontocracy jokes from the end of his tenure. But a quick refresher from Wikipedia reminds me that there are good reasons to remember his time fondly:
Compared to the current world leaders, Brezhnev and others were much younger, although they tended to have shitty health, because they fought in the Great Patriotic War, many were wounded and generally had many health compications.
The main joke I remember is from 1980, so five years after he had a stroke, in which he begins a speech by saying “Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh” and an aide has to tell him that those are the Olympic rings.
What is the difference between Brezhnev and Gorbachev? Brezhnev collected Soviet decorations, while Gorbachev collected Western ones.
That one i just genuinely dont get, but i definitely read him call himself a brezhnevite before, and idk what to think of someone with thay position at all
Vijay Prashad can be corny a lot, and holds a lot of optimism which can come across as naïve to some more cynical types. But I would not ever consider him an opportunist. Dude is a genuine communist, has been for his whole life and is properly well informed on communist theory and history. In one of his recent videos he made a passing comment that financially life has been a struggle. He doesn’t have health insurance. If he’s an opportunist then he’s bad at it. He could make a lot more money selling out his principles to talk on cable news.
I believe this is based in principle, not aesthetic. He is a big proponent of left unity. This is not to say he compromises on principle. I have seen him frankly disagree with people to their faces on several occasions. But he highly values that people sit and talk to each other, that that’s a necessary prerequisite to solving our problems. Especially in an era of capitalist antisocial fragmentation. Getting people into association together has to happen so that they can come to discuss politics and build class consciousness, just as the concentration of workers into factories and neighborhoods developed the proletariat as a class during the early capitalist era.
I definitely agree that Prashad isn’t doing the ‘marxist not NL’ thing for aesthetics, but I dont yet see how he can seek unity but not comrpomise on principles. Just taking Chomsky as the example, how does that look to you? I guess I’m fine on hexbear being a unity platform, but I would not organize or call people on here i disagree with inspiring or anything.
But for the rest, I agree, I should’ve made my initial comment a bit less enthusiastically (if I remember right, I was just done with a pretty intense argument and feeling a bit moody lol). I like Prashad, I just think his unity stuff is weak, personally, and think that less-than-ideal strategy of his comes out in lots of works. But I’m open to change on that, tbh, the distance between he and I is not that big