Date: Sun, 9 Mar 1997 20:39:30 GMT
Subject: M-G: Re: M-I: Cyberseminar and list issues


>This post is not really directed as much to the recent suspensions as it
>is to the overall question of how to re-focus the discussion on the list
>on more important matters.
>
>
>
>Therefore, I advocate that we start a new cyberseminar on nationalism
>without any delay. This is what we need to get the forward momentum going.
>I want to spend the rest of this week wrapping up my consideration of AM
>and John Roemer, but I suggest that we can start the new cyberseminar on
>March 24th. I volunteer to do the first report.
>
>Here is a proposed schedule:
>
>date/reporter/topic
>
>March 24 -- Louis Proyect
>Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg on the oppressed nationality question
>
>March 31 -- Louis Godena
>Stalin's views; the CPUSA and the "black belt"; DuBois
>
>April 6 -- Scott McLemee
>Trotsky and CLR James on black nationalism
>
>April 13 -- Zeynep Toufeci
>Kurdish nationalism
>
>April 20 -- Gary McLennan
>Irish nationalism
>
>April 27 -- Blunose (Gay Farley)
>Quebecois nationalism
>
>Yes, I "volunteered" a number of people. Unless the "volunteers" step
>forward, we are going to sink in a miasma. Absolutely no excuses from
>Scott who failed to turn in his term paper from last Fall. Particularly no
>excuses about an assignment to finish an article for "GEORGE". Let
>"GEORGE" wait on line. I'll compensate you for any lost wages.
>
>
>Louis Proyect
>


I am sorry to pour a bucket of cold water upon your proposals Louis.  The
Trotskyst sectarians are right on this and you are wrong.  It is practice
that is the proof of things and in the light of practice there is evidently
no ground for your optimism that a few re-hashes on themes -that important
as these may be are also those you can find in any left-paper or magazine  -
will now serve to divert attention of the need to sort out the list's
problems or star a new one.  
It is clear that no principled communists would take part in any
Cyber-seminar while this list continues to stink like a toilet of
anti-communist gases. At least I will not and I know of other valued
contributors who have expressed - justly - the same view. 

I do not deny that "compared to other lists" this list has a better record.
However what was useful in the past is not useful and cannot be useful now.
This is dialectics.  The Trotskyst sectarians have expressed clearly what
they want, and we have come - from the opposite direction - to very much the
same conclussions.

It is all very well to volunteer people to try to perpetuate this game of
offering "pearls of wisdom" by the yardful but it wont work and most likely
will be embarrasing for them should they accept.  

Moreover, what are the rules of the game now?  What is going on here?
Marxism-General reports that Godena, in the name of the moderators, has gone
and absolved the saboteur Levy of all responsibility, not here in this list
where everyone can see what it was said but in malecki's list.

We must sort out this problems first.  Either the Trotskyst sectarians -
whose stated aim is to drive "Stalinists" from the list go, or we,
principled communists, shall have to go ourselves and found a new one in
which we shall welcome all the good and positive people on equal footing and
for the purpose of advancing a serious Marxist understanding.  To persist in
the name of the "goodie-goodies" suppossedly to be delivered in your
cyber-seminars while the question of provocations that can result in
validating the possible repressive measures of the class enemy against
revolutionaries is only put in the back burner and not resolved, is rather
insensitive on your part.

I know that you do not mean to serve as a "bait-loader" - because that -
unfortunately - would be the net result of your festival of "succulent
themes" - until the next round of provocations followed by bogus
accussations against the revolutionaries comes round.  We are not to play
that game anymore. 

If the purpose of having this list is different than just providing a venue
for the "red-baiters" provocations to take place in a regular basis, count
me out.

If it is not, I hope you join us in our struggle for a Marxist
Re-affirmation list which is in fact in accordance with your own statement:
"They are not likely to change" - If that is so, then why have these people
in a Marxism list. The purpose of Marxism is precisely to effectuate change.
It seems to me that you are proposing that we should turn this purpose into
that of hitting our heads against the brick-walls.    

Marxism-International needs a change, and that is really urgent!  The Irish
question has been around for a few hundred years, the Nicaraguan revolution
is finished for the time being.  All that can wait a few days.  But the time
to make a stand for a new direction here is now, or else regrets would
return to haunt you and other good people later.


Adolfo




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