THE "DECENTS"

The Left has always been plagued by "splits" -- all those big egos have a lot of trouble getting on with one-another. The splits are so Protean that you have to be a Leftist insider to keep up with it all. I neither know nor care what characterizes all the different "splittists" on the Left so I am a little puzzled to know where I should put a blog that apparently speaks for "decents". I gather that "decents" are moderate British Leftists but I am obviously not in on the inner workings of them so may have it all wrong.

One of their sites bewails the fact that some moderate British Leftists energetically reject the more Stalinist Left and instead pay some heed to conservatives. They particularly refer to Norm Geras, a noted Marxian scholar who is -- at least these days -- not much of a Marxist himself. Norm and I have occasionally exchanged mutually cordial emails and I believe I may have come to his attention because of my own forays into Marxian scholarship. I once ran a daily blog devoted to the writings of Marx and Engels for a period of five months -- rather rare in anyone on either the Left or the Right, I am sure.

Anyway, the "Decents" blog is very angry with Geras because he has a link to my blog on his site. They describe me as "utterly unhinged", but give no reasoning whatever in support of that ascription. Apparently you are just supposed to twitch appropriately when a Leftist speaks. Attempting a reasoned argument would get them into murky waters, I fancy. So even the "decents", like almost all Leftists, would seem to think that abuse substitutes for reasoned argument. Not exactly "decent", I would have thought.

Posted by John Ray