----- Original Message ----- From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <j.bendien@wolmail.nl> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 5:06 AM Subject: Personalised attacks Actually, I would say the majority of Marx's "personalised" attacks were made in writings which he didn't publish for all and sundry to read. And of course an enormous amount of Marx's writings were unpublished in his lifetime. It is one thing to tell friends or associates in a private note or personal communication what you really think of so-and-so, it is another to pretend this is doing politics or a scholarly debate. I think the "Marxist" tradition of public villification really starts with Lenin (and in Russian culture at the time, swearing was an accepted custom). Trotsky did rather better. "Like Lessing", Bernard Shaw wrote of Trotsky, "when he cuts off his opponents head, he holds it up to show that there are no brains in it; but he spares his victim's private character... He leaves [his victim] without a rag of political credit; but he leaves him with his honour intact." (The Nation, London, 7 January 1922; quoted by Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, p. viii). This is perhaps not true of all Trotsky's writings, but does well describe his general orientation in most of his writings and speeches. Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Jun 02 2002 - 00:00:06 EDT