Date: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 01:59:36 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: Long live glorious M-G! (Why Vlad is wrong)


Long live glorious M-G! (Why Vlad is wrong)
[Posted: 23.12.97]

Long, long ago, way back in mid-1996, there were some people who
spoke badly of the "M1" list which existed in that time (the
Spoons' Marxism list, predecessor of M-G). Adolfo Olaechea, who 
had been on the right side in the recent "Quispe" fight at that
time, pointed out why they were doing this:

It was just a case of revisionism's having been beaten, and
now the advocates and representatives of that revisionism were
sour because things were going against them.

That was a correct judgement. One might add that it was a case 
too of some not entirely negative people's not having the
stomach for a somewhat sharper struggle.  

Later, in March 1997, Olaechea himself started vilifying the
open list (M-G, which had succeeded M1). Everything was wrong
with it, it was a "pigsty" and what-not. So Olaechea was off
to create a "list for the real revolutionaries", like f'rin-
stance those quite open and awowed Brezhnevites Jim Hillier,
Ola Eriksson etc: The SiberiaSwamp ("LeninList").

Olaechea was against M-G for that same reason which he himself
had once pointed out others were: Things were going against
him. He now himself was openly preaching some reactionary 
things and had been rebutted. After some months, he fell out
with his openly-Brezhnevite friends and ran off from the Swamp
too.

Now recently an "old hand" who was on "M1" too, Chris Burford,
started wailing about M-G - not for the first time either -
and about some other subscribers, that "they would soon be 
kicked out" or that "the list itself would go in which case 
*all* would be kicked out". Why was that?

I've written about it already. Other oldtimers may remember
how, even back in them days of April 1996, Chris-B "argued"
that "M1" was "an inherently menshevik forum(!)", "no good for
marxists at all to achieve anything at all", and other ridi-
culous stuff of the same order. This person *never* liked those
uncensored lists. He did so even less after his close friand
"Quispe" had been exposed and completely defeated (in mid-'96).

Now recently there has been a row again. Admittedly, the level
of discussion wasn't all that elevated. Much of it could be
summed up in: A: "You're a bastard, and the list should be
destroyed"; B: "No, *you're* a bastard and the list should stay
and stay open." Some people think that this was bad, it seems,
including Vladimir B.

No, it wasn't bad. The level may have been low, but M-G once
again showed up one of its important and good characteristics:
That of being a "meta-list", where all list business including
that of itself can be discussed openly.

You wrote, Vlad, that you took a glimpse at the M-G debates of
December, after not having followed the list for a while. Well,
you happened to hit on a time when there was one of those recur-
ring "meta rows" again. Had you chosen November instead, you'd
have seen a totally different picture, with no "wrangling"
("Marxism is a wrangling ism" - Mao Zedong) but with at least
some small discussions on world affairs today. Not that this
important side of M-G couldn't and shouldn't be developed much
more.

Vlad of course is right in pointing out (as he has done before 
and as he did too in his resent posting "This stinking list") 
the importance of an *unmoderated* list. But he's wrong in
saying "it now stinks" just because of that little recent brawl. 

That brawl didn't hurt, in the first place. And it actually
resulted in another defeat, in the second place, for the des-
tructive "line" of Chris-B, who now was opposed even by some 
people who had earlier accepted or else supported him.

It was another small victory for the idea of M-G, one might say.

This list doesn't "stink" at all. Long live glorious M-G!

Rolf M.



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