Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 22:32:02 +0000
Subject: M-G: Harsh words


> From:          Paul Gallagher <pcg-AT-panix.com>
> Subject:       Re: M-I: Re: Harsh words
> To:            marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> Date:          Thu, 27 Mar 1997 00:55:32 -0500 (EST)
> Cc:            pcg-AT-panix.com (Paul Gallagher)
> Reply-to:      marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU

Paul wrote:
> The power relationship is fundamentally different. Zeynep got
> Adolfo O. expelled because his words hurt her feelings. It's a plausible,
> if possibly incorrect, supposition that, since other people's feelings
> are not given equivalent consideration, her gender played a role.
> But let's suppose that to say this is the vilest "sexist lie"
> imaginable; even then, defending Adolfo O. is not equivalent to defending
> the company in a dispute over sexual harassment. Zeynep is the one in
> power here. Even if we imagine Adolfo words were the sexist lies Zeynep
> calls them, defending Zeynep is more like defending a female middle 
> manager who claims to have been sexually insulted by a male worker.
<  Zeynep T. complains about the mote in Adolfo's eye, when Adolfo
> is basically on the side of the broad masses of people, while
> remaining silent about the beam in her own eye, for example, the
> nest of would-be Hoover Institute hacks over which she broods.


Adolfo was not expelled. He was suspended mainly for making death 
threats. His sexism showed up later when trying to defend himself.  
He walked out of M-I an act of political cowardice.  He still manages 
to get some of his posts sent here, but apparently refuses to read 
replies.  If Zeynep is in power it is because she is acting by our 
agreement to enforce the rules of the list. We may not agree with all 
the rules, but so long as we participate we empower Zeynep and Jon 
and Louis G.  To say that Adoflo's sexism is justified because he is 
a worker and Zeynep is a middle manager is to abuse Marxism in the 
usual bureaucratically thuggish way we expect of Adolfo fans. Even if 
Adolfo is the number one world revolutionary leader, which he is not,
he has even less excuse for being sexist. Even if Zeynep is a bourgeois 
women which she is obviously not, she should not be attacked as a woman. 
It is because Adolfo and his supporters are politically bankrupt that 
they resort to the familiar methods of labelling their opponents as 
non-workers, even fascist agents [presumably this is the reference to 
the Hoover Institute hacks]. This is the supreme historic irony 
given Stalinisms rehabilitation of the oppression of women in the SU 
and its liquidation of oppositionists who challenged Stalin's class 
collaborationist politics over half- a-century.

Dave.

>
>
> 
> > can, and besides Paul with is constant Stalin baiting is hardly
> > the proper person to leap to the defense of Siddarth, who I suppose
> > can defend himself. Sexism *IS* scabbing. And
> 
> I think you're confusing me with Paul Zarembka.
> 
> What else besides scabbing is scabbing?
> 
> 
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