Sometimes you think you're done with something and it turns out you're not. This, for me, is one of those times. The series of which the present post is a continuation can be found here (just for those who missed the first three instalments and may want to get the feel of things).
Now, you need to know how to handle an analogy or comparison. Thus, if I should say that a bicycle is like a bus in that both have wheels, you will be wasting your, my and anyone else's time who pays attention to what you say, if you carefully explain that I'm wrong about this because a bus is unlike a bicycle in that the bus can accommodate many more people inside it. Cue whoever it is that blogs at Lenin's Tomb and calls himself, sometimes, Nikolai and, other times, Lenin. Supposedly responding to this post of mine, Nik - which is how I shall refer to him just to be friendly, since he has kindly allowed himself elsewhere to speak of me as 'Norm', and why would I ever rebuff an overture like that? - Nik helpfully points out to me that 'The Democrats are not a working class party, and have no organic connections to the labour movement', and he chides me for possibly 'think[ing] there is a sincere difference between John Kerry and George W. Bush'.
Strange to relate, however, my post did not characterize the Democratic Party as a working class party and nor did it say anything one way or another about the the degree or kind of difference between Kerry and Bush - even though the occasion of it was a piece by John Pilger in which he was discussing this difference, or alleged lack of it. But it's bus and bicycle. For after introducing what I wrote by explaining what Pilger's topic was, I said that 'I just want to comment on one feature of it', and went on to comment on that one feature. I pointed out that Pilger talks of Clinton and Bush as crypto-fascists, while taking it as a point against an Al Gore adviser that he was for the destruction of the Baathist regime, and also being willing himself - Pilger, that is - to support the bombers in Iraq and not be 'too choosy' in doing so. And I then said that this is like Third Period Comintern policy in the 1930s 'when the German Social Democrats were dubbed "Social Fascists" by the Communist Party and regarded as a greater menace than [the Nazis]'. My point, my only point, in making this comparison was that like the Comintern parties in the 1930s Pilger was (loosely) associating with fascism politicians who are not fascist, while being rather more indulgent towards political forces to which some of us think this epithet is more appropriate: like the Saddam Hussein regime and those presently blowing up Iraqis (to say nothing of UN and Red Cross personnel) in Iraq.
So Nik's post, in so far as it concerns me, and in so far as its ambition might have been taken to be substantive argument, is empty. But that it is substantively empty doesn't mean it's empty in every way. No. Attitudinally, it's much fuller. Gosh, it's jolly unfriendly. It says 'ex-Marxist Norman Geras'. Ouch. That is so wounding - particulary since on Nik's blogroll I'm only 'Marxist gone awry'. It looks like I may have deteriorated in Nik's eyes: one can presumably find a way back from 'gone awry', but 'ex' sounds more final. And then 'Cruise Missile Liberal'. Oh no. I could have lived with the Cruise Missile bit, since I've always wanted to own one. But liberal? How awful. How much better to be entombed some place from where I could be dishing out snotty little judgements of apostasy.
For your greater instruction, Nik, let me share with you the fact - for such it is - that it's some good long time since I became acquainted with the virtues of liberalism and it's been a while, also, that I've been happy to call myself a liberal - a liberal Marxist, if you will (which you probably won't, and so much the worse for you then).
Your post was stupid. True, it contains no obscenities, and you've not risen to calling for me to be shot like a mad dog. But you (a) engage with what I don't say and (b) call me names. I'm not saying that you're stupid, since I don't know you. Just that your post was. Let me buy you a drink some time.
(To be continued)
