Your logic is pretty convincing as much of it as I understand.

After reading the correspondence between you and the commentors in the post below, I am amazed and appreciative at the time you give to your readers.

In fact, I do not see how you can do it.

No need to respond. Thanks again.

1 – Those academics and Intellectuals, who are fluently versed, and glad to receive, and tackle whatever you present to them.
2- The Left Wings Supporters, that can recite you Kapital at once, and were around before you started to publish.
3 – And a bunch of ‘curious, confused, white-right wing-christian-middle-class guys that are trying to understand what the hell is going on.”

I hope that readers live outside these boxes. I’m just this guy, and it’s just this blog. I do whatever it is I do. And it does whatever it does. The real work gets done by the mass organizations.

Happy New Year to you, as well.

I’ll have to carve out some time to check the links.

Thanks.

By glancing at some of your readers comments, and referring to an earlier post of mine, it looks like you have indeed advanced deep into ever more sophisticated concepts and abstract thinking. This, to the point of confusing and loosing those of your readers, that did not either study academically, or were not exposed to such traumatic succession of events in their life, (like your own) that it would have produced a surge of extraordinary ‘visions’ about the harsh reality of this world, and prompted them to ACT NOW before it all ends up in tears.

Your average net-reader is NOT connected to the reality of our planet. i have been drifting along the West African coast, and whilst staying in Cape Verde, I visited the suburbs of towns. There, Compounds with no tarmac roads, no running water or sewages, no glass windows on houses, but bars and locks and, overpowering human Faeces, Urine and hot moisture saturated red earth scent nearly blinding you, children prostituting themselves to fishermen, with parents turning a blind eye, for a ration of protein – this is the norm – When i shared my outrage with a local French expat friend, he glared at me and replied: Laurent, these people are rich! they live extremely well. You have not see Djibouti, where kids are standing before your eyes, starving, whilst rotting alive, slowly eaten by worms!

Re 72 year old’ Raphael’ lecturing you, never mind his lack of elegance, what you wrote in the open letter to congress is “extremely revolutionary”. Now, by no means this implies that you were wrong or right to write this, (I do not believe in dualism) but the huge forward leap that you required your ‘conventional-unacquainted-with-the-reality’ readers was obviously too much to make, especially for those with aging legs. The old boy has some merit only to care to read your articles…let him yak a bit. Oh well, we should not mind.

- about the congress letter– I was reading it later during the night. I had my baby boy sleeping on my laps. At the end of it, I posed, contemplated him, whilst meditating on your words…I guess you know how I felt.

Still, i’ve looked on history and revolutions…really they never achieved the original goal, systematically replacing one oligarchy with another. (beside, and for example Stan, who instigated the French Revolution?..you know don’t you)

Everybody expect governments to lead, be wise, fair and be kind to their people. That is dualist chritian [patriarchic] thinking. Kindness does not exist as an absolute rule in nature.
I think it will be the other way round. For humanity to succeed, and TRUE civilisation to finally blossom, it will be down to each one of us souls, without the need for collectivist revolutions, to make our own, respective, transition.
The elites, to me, are like the devil’s advocate. They are the teachers testing the pupil. When each one of us, has gained the visions of likes of Stan Goff, then they won’t be a need for revolution. And yes, citizens may, like you, have to meet Hell face to face first, before moving they lazy ass.

- About all the 72 year old Raphael – including my own father.

I have a sort of ‘Raphael’ has a father. HE was well educated, and whilst very conservative, he was ant-racist, and used to be suspicious of those in power, and of the ecclesiastics. Today, I could not even dream of starting a discussion on any controversial issue. Its not the age. It’s a consequence of our march, or lack-of, towards our own Personal R-evolutions. Life does not sit still for a second. Dogma, Education and Media echoing the ‘official’ general consensus, freezes our primal instinct for survival and our ability to remain supple.

Rambling on,

What I am trying to say?

You may have at least 3 classes of readers:

1 – Those academics and Intellectuals, who are fluently versed, and glad to receive, and tackle whatever you present to them.
2- The Left Wings Supporters, that can recite you Kapital at once, and were around before you started to publish.
3 – And a bunch of ‘curious, confused, white-right wing-christian-middle-class guys that are trying to understand what the hell is going on.

So the question is:

1- Do you want to preach to the converted, have big group crying and hugging sessions?
2- Meet like-minded thinkers, and teachers, (if they are any left that you have not surpassed yet) whit whom you WILL elucidate the great questions of this world, whilst everything is falling apart outside the library?
3- or take the bull by the horn, and show him the light

Maybe there is a need for you to publish under three different blogs, as i am sure that your Marxist supporters need you, and that our academics must have news from you.
Furthermore, issues like patriarchy and the military, deserve there own site.
But please, don’t forget the bulls. Bull Fighting is a tragedy, selecting by crossbreeding over generations the nastiest genes from otherwise magnificent peaceful creatures.

Looking back at your childhood, your military career, then your shift to freedom, your contribution in FTW, then your first book, Haiti a Soldier’s memoirs, then moving on to Full Spectrum Disorder, to finally see you featured in SRA….What a change! What a move…what a r-evolution!
Your opinion on Military and Gender is priceless.
To some, you are a Hero Stan. To me, you are a blend of El Che-Colonel Kurtz–a 50’s French Rive Gauche philosopher.

The problem? The pace of your progression, compared to your devoted readers, is ten-fold! You are living everyone standing behind.

Your original writing style was of a revolted, rebelling soldier, spontaneous, human, sometimes clumsy but witty. Full Spectrum was beginning to show two sides: the intense abstract intellectual, and the rebelling soldier, but then, already, I was getting confused: who were you aiming to?

So going back to the Raphaels et all, take my case for example:

I told you: I consider myself a right winger…I have been asking questions, looking into alternatives, now for the last 6 years, spending at least 20 hours per week into it! And I am still not sold on the Karl thing.

Still,

There is a funny article called Left wing, Right wing, Chicken wings, written by Matt Taibbi,
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21354/

Really, this is torturing me: where do I stand politically?

So I tried to figure it out, testing the “political compass”

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/index.php
By all means, check it out: some of the questions are cheekily formulated…and I would love you to write out a quick review about it…

I got chocked and horrified! to find out the test results:
According to Compas, I am a Left Wing Lebertarian! The only consolation is that Nelson Mendela, Ghandi and the Daila Lama are too. Oh well, I am supposed to feel better don’t’I?
Now, on top of my mid-life crisis, I have to deal with this affliction…I think I’m going to go “covert”

My warmest and sincerest best wishes for 2006 Stan.

Hi Targe,

I appreciate the accolades. But respectfully, the perspectives contained within the more popular writing I have done are a direct outgrowth of my own engagement with these other issues and ideas. The posts on Engels are pretty substantial, I believe. Obviously, this is a different stratum that other stuff might attract, but hopefully we can walk on both these legs.

If you liked Full Spectrum Disroder, I hope you will like “Sex & War,” the third book coming out (hopefully in Feb), that picks up where FSD left off, studying the relations between imperialism and masculinity.

Never doubt that I will continue to weigh in on the depredations of imperialism. But I will take this opportunity to encourage those who share that interest to look at the posts on “gender” at this blog. This is an important connection. Start with the series on the fallout from Abu Ghraib at:

http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=67
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=66
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=65
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=64
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=63
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=62
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=61

Then see the piece on the US military and how it responds to the issue of rape:

http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=165
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=166
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=167
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=168
http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=169

There is no mention of Engels in any of these, only very topical stuff, but they show how this is anything but in the clouds.

Thanks again for the generous review of other work, and Happy New Year.

Here is an appropriate excerpt from FSD that relates to this, I think, and to the name of this blog:

Nothing so contributes to the reproduction of class in our society, aside from property relations, as the institutionally enforced intellectual division of labor. It dissects knowledge into academic ghettos, and it attempts to freeze working class people out of the intelligentsia altogether.

Credentials!

Capitalism needs its credentialed mandarins, and the mandarins often define even who are the “legitimate” critics of capitalism. Specialization and credentialing are the keys to this legitimation, and the keys to the exclusion of would-be transgressors.

Those of us who lack the credentials must be excluded from the intelligentsia, because the inclusion of our voices, the legitimation of our voices, calls into question the legitimacy of the whole fucking system.

I feel this personally, both as a former enlisted man and as a leftist. As a leftist, I have sometimes encountered powerful pressure to circumscribe my own role, and to limit my own public discourse, to criticism of US military policy… to serve the revolution only as a witness.

Leave theory to the experts. Just like the military [with its officer caste system].

Working class people can and must become intellectuals. We can and must study diligently, debate, self-criticize, re-study, and continually sharpen our ability to play intellectual hardball.

We can’t be lazy about it. It’s always easier to pretend you know something than it is to learn about it. It’s always easier to be cute than it is to be rigorous. It is easier to talk trash than practice the humility of the serious student. We have to work, harder than the bourgeoisie, because we are at war. Perhaps the biggest “war lie” of all right now in the United States is that our ruling class is at war only with external enemies. Look around.

“United we stand.” Who the fuck is “we?” Is the general facing the same situation as the private? Are the moguls of agribusiness sharing hardship with the people whose communities they pollute? Is the vicious preppy prez sharing his privileges with the South Asian family running a fleabag motel for a corporate chain? Is John Ashcroft getting personally involved to gain justice for the community of Tulia, Texas where dozens of Black families were railroaded into prison by racist cops and judges?

We who are doing that labor to become working class intellectuals can never allow ourselves to be intimidated by advanced degrees – just as we cannot become anti-intellectuals. We can never afford to contain ourselves within predetermined specializations. The experience of working class intellectuals will enrich theory. Our stories will keep things real. Our practice will define the future.

And we deserve to be heard.

Happy New Year from TN.

I got TFTOTS in the mail two days ago. I’m reading and underlining like a madwoman. I’m dizzy between that and the Dworkin and the Manifesto and TOFPPS.

EGAD!!

Your letters to the troops in Iraq were inspiring and persuasive.

Your commentary on the empire and the progression of mistakes in Iraq had me looking for your articles every day. Your insight seemed to be intuitive…at least it showed what you had learned from your experiences as a soldier. Your comment re Bush and the neocons were likewise enlightening.

Your observations that it was going to take some action, not blather, to unseat the powers that be were unsettling, but convincing.

However, since you have concentrated on gender and on Engles so much recently, you are losing me and from looking at the dirth of comments, I suspect that you are losing other what were once avid readers.

Someone once said that leaders need to look over their shoulder now and then to make sure that someone is following.

Hopefully, you will soon finish the scholarly presentations on Engles and the philosophy of Marxism and come back to earth where your readers are.

And post your more worldly comments in the appropriate place.