Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 09:08:15 -0500 (EST)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-G: MIM on divisiveness


MIM wrote:

> I was offering technical and moderation aid to set up "Marxism-Commit,"
> but I guess the Spooners oppose.

> I will not be setting up mailing lists along the lines Hans says anytime
> soon, so no one wait for me.

Well, let's see now.  You want to offer us "aid".  In other words, we are
still supposed to do most of the work, but you will "aid" us.  You, on the
other hand, are not willing to contemplate the reverse situation, in which 
_you_ take responsibility for creating and running the list that you
supposedly want, and we perhaps "aid" you.  This, you say, is something that
is not going to happen any time soon.  Spoon has to do it for you.  If we take
the same position you do -- that we don't want to do it -- then we are branded
as "divisive" and "individualistic".  

Now let's examine the question of this "technical aid".  To give us this "aid",
you would have to have access to the computer system that the list is run on.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that you basically consider 
people who work at universities to be in league with the class enemy.
You have no solidarity with them, even though they are workers.  
I would say that this in itself is as divisive as can be; but no matter.
So I ask you: why would you not consider it a proper combat action to
do as much damage as you can to the system to which we would be giving you 
access?  Or am I completely misunderstanding your position?

BTW, you say:

> Intellectuals seem to avoid science these days, partly as a matter of
> trendy post-modernism, but also as a matter of their class position.
> Science is accessible to anyone and practiced by anyone, especially in
> application. That fact undercuts the self-interest of bourgeois
> intellectuals as a group.

This seems utterly sloppy.  Are scientists -- the very people who _do_ science
and without whom there would be nothing to "avoid" -- not themselves 
intellectuals?  The people who do particle physics and high-energy
physics and medical research and gene splicing?  What are they?  You say 
"science is practiced by anyone".  Well, so is thinking.  So then _everybody_ 
is an intellectual, no?  These divisions you are so hand-wavingly setting 
down as if they were self-understood baffle me.


-m


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