Re: Michael Hardt in the NY Times

Thank you for that well-reasoned, scathing response.  I'm finally
starting to realize why the orthodox Marxist perspective is the only
correct one.  Tomorrow I'm throwing all my books (especially the ones
about Polybius or any other thinker from before the 19th century) on a
bonfire of the vanities.  I'll save only those books in the Marxist
tradition.  Come think of it, quite a few of Marx's own books mention guys
whose name ends in "es" or "us", and I'm not entirely sure that every
member of the Transit Workers' Union would fully understand the
tendency of the rate of profit to decline.  Just to be on the safe side,
I'll throw some of my Marxist books in as well - I can get by with a copy
of "Herr Vogt" and a well thumbed "What is Dialectical Materialism" from
Progress Publishers.  Just to be on the safe side, I'll put a garlic
necklace around my neck to prevent me from ever looking at a book
published after 1964 ever again.

How visionary Marx was to have lived in an age before the modern mass
media and the sensationalization of academics!  How foresightful to have
produced a corpus of work which could never be put to nefarious ends,
never end up as required reading or a substitute scripture (like those
FARC bastards are doing with "Empire"!).  How clever to never have coined
a new concept, especially one with any appeal to rootless intellectuals!
Can one stress enough the profound morality of Marx, who never in his life
compromised with intellectual fashions or sought academic positions, and
who remained for his entire life at his factory job, unlike other
Victorian-era intellectuals who were content to be bankrolled by their
wealthy bourgeois friends!

I'm ready for revolutionary politics now.  As soon as all those books as
done burning, comrade, turn down the Bach and pass me a Molotov cocktail.

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bstremli@binghamton.edu