Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 20:19:57 -0400
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: sticks and stones


At 08:05 AM 5/3/98 +1000, you wrote:
>I wrote this yesterday, then thought I had over-reacted, so chose not to
>post it. Today I see that if anything I had understated matters.
>

I am out of here, so the psychotic Jerry Levy can get back to his normal
neurotic self.

Just some parting thoughts:

1) Reeves' article is much worse than people understand. I simply don't
have time or energy to explain it here, where Marxism is not understood by
people or, when understood, viewed hostilely like Jerry Levy does. This is
his real beef--Marxism--not the people who are its forceful defenders like
Doug Henwood, Mark Jones or myself.

2) Kathe Pollitt's obsessive worrying over concessions to Catholicism by
the EZLN is identical to the sort of thing I heard from Trotskyite
sectarians when the Pope visited Cuba. The other night the news reported
that the Pope's visit has made an enormous impact on Miami opinion and will
likely lead to the end of the embargo. This means that Cuban children will
be able to get medicine that might save their lives. When the EZLN works
with the Catholic Church, it might have the effect of saving some peasants
from death squads. That American leftists can't put this into proper
perspective discredits us, not the comrades to our south.

3) I have done serious research into the connections between indigenous
struggles and marxism, particularly where Marxism falls short. Ward
Churchill cited Baudrillard's "Modes of Production" in a debate with the
American Maoists. Baudrillard has some excellent insights and Marxists can
learn from him. I am disappointed that the political and intellectual level
of au-top-sy is so low that nobody can seem to be able to understand or
even be interested in what I have to say. My Chiapas article was a
challenge to conventional Autonomist thinking on this question, but it
seems to have sailed over everybody's head. Oh well, there are other venues
on the Internet and I will pursue these questions there.

4) Finally, on Levy's networking with right-wing scum on the Internet. 2
years ago a 42 year old man named Joseph Phelan, aka Liam Flynn, Thomas
Murray, Li Tranh, stalked a 16 year old girl that he met through the
Marxism lists. He showed up unannounced at her high school graduation and
asked her to come to a motel with him to have sex. She was frightened out
of her wits. Phelan's main 2 allies on the Internet are Levy and Robert
Malecki, an American living in Sweden who told people that he
singlehandedly stopped Dow Chemical from producing napalm as a result of
his protests. When I pressed him to give evidence of such heroic actions (I
had become convinced that his sole purpose on the Internet was to harass
leftists), he supplied a Cleveland Plain-Dealer article from 1971 detailing
his arrest for stealing dynamite to use against working people. In other
words, he was caught up in a typical police agency provocation, like the
kind that black militants or ultraleft antiwar activists were often
suckered into. These are the sort of people that Levy has an affinity for.
You are welcome to him.

Louis Proyect




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