An After Weekend Update

I was supposed to make a sign for FNB (food not bombs) and go to the anti-war protest. I've looking forward to that all week. But on Friday I got a case of the blues and felt like doing nothing all weekend except to watch several episodes of South Park with sessions of playing Counter Strike. Now I have left myself the task of completing two chapters of Calculus for a test on Wednesday... I am not so bright.

Also, I gave Tynan the url to my blog... which may result in the future reponses from the Sparticist Trotskyist group to every "reactionary" thought on this page though they probably will have better things to do. On a side note, Dave read me a Chomsky quote from The Chomsky-Foucault debate on Human Nature.

Ronat: Have you ever met any French Marxist philospher?
Chomsky: Rarely. Here some distinctions are necessary. Contemporary
Marxist philosophy has been linked in large part to the Leninist doctrine, at
least until recently. European Marxism after World War I developed
unfortunate tendencies, in my opinion: the tendencies associated with
Bolshevism, which has always seemed to me an authoritarian and reactionary
current.

I found it hilarious that Chomsky called Bolshevism a "reactionary current," because the Trotskyist keep saying Anarchism is. Though this quote really bares no relevance because it is subjective on what the desired end point is. But I kind of agree with Chomsky in the fact that well, any structure of state power whether it's to Nobility in feudalism, Elites in capitalism or the Vanguard Party in State communism is creating a ruling of the majority over the minority. Though others may argue that Vanguard Party isn't the same, in that case I would ask why not and would demand for answers that aren't the similar to what the Nobility of the past and Elites of the present said. The rest of the quote continues.

Chomsky: ... The latter became dominant within the European Marxist
tradition after the Russian Revolution. But much more to my taste, at
least, are quite diffefrent tendencies, for example, that range of opinion that
extends roughly from Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch Marxist Anton Pannekoek and
Paul Mattick to the anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker and others.
These thinksers have not contributed to philosophy in teh
sense of our discussions; but they have much to say about society, about social
change, and the fundamental problems of human life. Thought not about
problems of the sort that we have been discussing, for example.
Marxism itself has become too often a sort of church, a
theology.
Of course, I'm generalizing far too much. Work of
value has been done by those consider themselves Marxists. But up to a
certain point this critism is justified, I'm afraid. In any case, I do not
believe that Marxist philosophy, of whatever tendency, has made a substantial
contribution to the kidn of questions we have been discussing.
For the rest, what I know has not impressed me greatly and has
not encouraged me to seek to know more.

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There is something wrong with the food I made because both Dave and I have upset stomachs. We both doubt we are getting enough nutrition on our $40/week grocery budget. We probably would do better without 25% of it towards junk food. And I keep forgetting to take my B-12 supplement. I'll have to make more of an effort on putting fruit and vegetables in our meals. This week the meal plan is:
- potatoe & carrot tomatoe soup
- spinach soup
- stir fried rice
- burmese style chili
with fruit, cereal and bagels in between.