Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 07:05:53 GMT
Subject: M-G: CB-RM dialogue


CB-RM dialogue

Doug asked:


>>>

Chris Burford wrote:

>Why I think Rolf is a provocateur.

C'mon, Chris, why dignify this clown with a response? Here's a guy who
loves nuclear power, hates same-sexers, and admits he's chatted with the
Swedish secret service - and you feel the need to answer his idiocies?

<<<<<

Interesting question, from someone I regard as a valuable 
resource on economic information and pretty psychologically
literate. Well Doug, I will try to answer it literally, but
although I tried to answer it briefly, I failed, as you
see. 

In many ways I think your comment is healthy, sane (no backhanded
complement here) and practical. It is a mixture of tit-for-tat
and ignoring. I did ignore the 140K slander last year, and only
read it a few months ago. I now make my strong criticisms and 
challenges to Rolf in a correct form not because I am mainly
interested in getting into a dialogue with him, but the
criticism must be made in a way as if he were a comrade rather than
necessarily a paid provocateur, that does not isolate the damage that the 
fact of his arbitrary slander does to the list.

Last year the list was in chaos, and it was certainly beyond
my abilities to challenge Rolf in the way I have now. Much
has been resolved. Most importantly one year has gone by and 
the broad outlines of the extraordinarily intense flame war
between rival supporters of an armed struggle can be seen in 
greater perspective. I think it has become clear that both
sides were inexperienced in some of the consequences of the
net. Both are acting differently now. The Quispe address restricts 
itself to issuing statements and does not have individuals engaging
in rapidly escalating tit-for-tat. Adolfo with his supporters have
set up a list more specifically focussed around a model of 
leninism and almost certainly a conception of anti-revisionism.

Meanwhile in the whole of the last year there was no evidence that
the PCP has given any decisive signal of which side was right,
which side has its trust, or which side is a highly dangerous
turned source that will severely compromise the security of 
any supporters of the armed struggle in Peru who associate with
it. Indeed the PCP appears to have issued no public statements at
all in the last year on anything, let alone internet flame wars.

I hope Rolf does return sometime in the future on the question
of the WMC. The call raised a number of extremely complicated
contradictions which could not be foreseen fully at the time
by any of the participants I suspect. Those contradictions
were badly handled and became increasingly antagonistic. But
if Rolf objected to a follow up statement being made about
the WMC without him being consulted, it is also possible that the
original call was issued without the New Flag people being 
consulted. The internet speeds up all communications but
courtesies sometimes matter even more as a result. It is 
arguable that the relatively minor differences of emphasis and
style between the USA and the European supporters of the
armed struggle in Peru became amplified into a flame war 
quite out of proportion to the task in hand. Both sides 
had no confidence in Avakian and RIM. Both wanted an
independent promotion of the significance of the Peoples'
War as they saw it.  

Rolf's agenda was different again however
because he was actually critical of the "petty bourgeois"
tendencies in the PCP and was looking for a way to 
recreate a centre of pure and correct Mao Zedong thinking
in the world while overlooking Mao's strictures against
sectarianism and dogmatism and his argument against
having an international at all. Rolf's scholastic pedantry
was as effective in fanning contradictions as mine is in 
dampening them down. 

What is important here is of course not two individuals.
If I and Rolf have insulted each other the world will 
still go on turning. The fact that has been exposed that
Rolf does not exactly trust me, and would like others not
to trust me, is stale news. What matters is this list,
as Zeynep has stepped in quietly to point out.

Now although marxism-international has IMO rapidly 
overfulfilled its expectations, there is a danger that its
culture could become too homogeneous and there may well be
a role again for an all comers list like marxism-general could
be once again. 

There is a lot too to be said for the 
emphasis on self-moderation. The moderators of m-international
wisely continue to make clear that there is no censorship on 
line. On m-general there is no censorship on style either.
But we have only two regular posters, Rolf and Robert, who
are inconsiderate about the way they  dominate m-general
by volume, and the freedom they claim to copy discussions here
wherever they wish on the net, and the tone in which they deal
with some political arguments. And Robert and Rolf IMO are 
actually feeling the pressure to some extent to think where they
are going and where this list is going.

Because although a disagreement between two individuals is not
important compared to whether we want this list to continue,
the paradox is that this list can only continue if there is some
consideration among other things, to how individuals participate in it,
and a broadly constructive but no doubt dynamic culture is
once again reaffirmed by the culture carriers. 

That is why a line needs to be drawn in the sand by me about 
Rolf continuing to jeer at you as Dougy Left-Biz, quite 
independent of whether I think you have some empiricist 
deviations (which case I have not seen proved). And that is 
why your just retorting yourself with tit-for-tat is sane
enough but is not a sufficient answer. Perhaps both types
of response have their role.

What we are seeing is that this totally unstructured enounter
space on m-general is having to create its own culture and that
includes relatively sophisticated conventions of criticism and
self-criticism, not because Stalin or Trotsky wrote about the 
concept some time ago, but because it is inherent in how
human beings interact if they are to achieve anything at all.

I have little reason to love Rolf, but nothing is achieved by
my returning curse of curse. It is funny when you suggest 
Rolf likes handling plutonium but not dialectical. Rolf cannot
be 100% wrong. No one is.

Recently I had cause to rethink the nuclear question when I heard
a BBC report about the situation in Sweden. It noted that the
policy confirmed in the referendum in 1980 (?) has now reached its
payment date. This is the time the nuclear plants have got to start to 
be shut down. And this report also noted that the popular vote
in the referendum had been probably influenced by a group of 
business people (obviously for their own reasons) coming out
in favour of axing all nuclear power. Now when Rolf first
reported this it sounded to me just like one his conspiracy
theories. Rigid, dogmatic self-validating and irrelevant.
But in more recent months he has started posting contributions 
on a campaign in the Malmoe area. While I have not read them I have
been pleased to note what seemed like progress. I tended to assume
I would still disagree with the line but it seemed more constructive
that Rolf should be doing this and rubbing shoulders with actual
human beings and having to compromise in practice, than to be
roaming the internet looking for a group of Maoist clones
who without any contradiction amongst themselves could 
recreate the line of the Chinese Party as it existed for a 
brief perfect period of time in 1975, 
or recreating the perfection of KPDML Neue Einheit
at the peak of its beauty in 1979.

Instead of scuffing along the Baltic coastline looking for 
some amber jewel in which a perfect representation of a fossilized
insect is preserved in all its detail but entirely static,
Rolf has abandoned some of his solipsism (despite the fact
that his internet journal is still ironically called "Unite")
he has got involved in some practice. Perhaps time to 
leave the amber jewels on the mantlepiece.

If he and Robert would realise that loading M-general down
with massive periodic contributions from themselves actually
will kill the audience for themselves and for everybody else
because it obstructs dialogue, then we can see whether m-general
could indeed develop a culture of its own again alongside 
m-international, more chaotic no doubt, but at times perhaps
also creative for that reason.

Anyway I am going off m-space soon for a break and 
will look at the new refurbished archives when I return.
I have issued my challenge to Rolf to withdraw until he 
makes a self criticism. What he actually does is of 
course entirely up to him. But I would have thought it is in all
our interests to learn something from this strange 
and largely, but not wholly, negative experience.



Chris Burford

London




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