From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-FEM: To the moderator(s): please...HEY NOW!
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:50:49 -0500 (CDT)


Keith and The List,

    This won't do; everyone should read and re-read the exchanges
between Zeynep and Renate. The arguments there apply equally to
anyone thinking of unsubbing because of the attitudes / positions /
tone / whatever of anyone else on the list.

    Before going on, a query: Do most on the list agree with Rosa
Luxemburg's "socialism or barbarianism" formula; if so, do most
interpret as I do, namely, that the *or* is serious, that barbarianism
is a seriously possible alternative (or even the most likely al-
ternative), and hence (?) there is no "third way"?

    Anyone who answers "Yes" to these queries has, de facto, placed
themselves in uncompromising opposition to what is perhaps the
most ruthless ruling class in world history. (APOLOGY: that sentence
is a bit of [national] chauvinism, since it refers to the U.S. ruling
class and many on this list are not from the U.S.) And if we think
that it's even remotely sensible to place ourselves in the path of
(a cliche about a century old) the capitalist juggernaut, can we,
really, quail before the difficulties of establishing an internet
discourse on the crucial theoretical and practical issues implicit
in the list's name: "marxism-feminism"?

    It seems to me that all the messages during the last month which
spoke of unsubbing (actual or promised) *could* have been part of
that discourse; that is, each contained, more or less explicitly,
a provisional position on the questions of gender within the
revolutionary movement. Why not simply state and develop and under
pressure qualify those positions, rather than make them a platform
for denying the possibility of such discourse.

    I expelled Malecki from the list for his invocation of "feminist
ballbusters," and my abortive discussion of list dynamics taking off
from a passage in Ebert was intended both to give the rationale for
that expulsion *and* suggest the limitations of such a rationale. I
wish I could have developed my initial idea, because we need a clearer
shared understanding of what can be expected from our list. . . . ?

Carrol

====================Keith Sprouse wrote June 26 at 4:30 pm:

I'm sorry that this message has to go out to the whole list,
but unfortunately I get a message back from the majordomo
telling me that I can't unsubscribe from the marxism-feminism
list because I'm not a member.  And since the list seems to
have returned to the reductive "men on this list are
(fill-in-the-blank-here)" sort of comments (a stage that I had
thought passed), I would like to be unsubscribed.

Please take me off the list.

Thanks.

Keith