File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1998/marxism-general.9804, message 150


Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 23:11:58 +0000
From: vladimir bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
Subject: M-G: On dead souls, etc.


1. The Spoons and Hans have made a sound decision. Instead of 
supporting one list with no limit on posts and one list with
one post limit they decided to support one list with no limit
on posts.

2. I want Rolf, Hugh and other upholders of sacred principles
to answer one simple question: who will protect them, how, and 
against whom?

3. This group of upholders claims or implies to represent
the interests of the silent majority.  What is the foundation
of this claim?  Did they get some private correspondence from
100 or so subscribers, most of whom never posted a single message
on this list, with a request to represent their interests in
deciding where to move the list and how to administer it?  If they
did I request that they make this correspondence public. If they do
not have any proof of this kind we must see them as representing 
 only themselves.

4. In his last post, Rolf produced a remarkable piece of calculation.
He suggested that since about a dozen of our subscribers (among them
there were at least two fake addresses) spoke up against the 
recent one-post-a-day kick in the ass from the Spoons and Hans--
we can safely add to them a hundred of subscribers who never
spoke up against or in favor of anything.  This feat of magic
finally made it click in my head.  I recalled Gogol's immortal
masterpiece _Dead Souls_ whose protagonist Chichikov navigated
Russian countryside in search of "dead souls," i.e. dead serfs
who were considered alive by the "IRS" of that time until the
next census.  Chichikov did not have to work hard to persuade
landowners to sell him these souls on the cheap.  The landowners 
were happy to so they could avoid paying taxes on these non-existing
peasants. But what was Chichikov's interest in such a ghostly business?
The cheat planned to sell the dead souls as if they were alive and 
disappear into the thin air.  Russia is big, you know. 

Could it be that something like trading in dead souls has been
going on on this list recently, I thought,  reading Hugh, Rolf, and
Chris Burford.

Here, for example, is what Chris wrote on Apr 27:

>If thaxis is going to Utah, I do not think it is acceptable that the
>decision on marxism-general should be taken by a vote of less than 10% >of the membership. We need more consensus, and more collective spirit.

This is one of those passages which the pomoized academic heads
love to call "undecidable."  Kafka would certainly greatly appreciate
its mystique.  But since I am a mundane marxist who appreciates
clarity I asked myself: who is the "we" of the second sentence?
I immediately rejected the possibility of Chris refering to himself
in the first plural.  As loyal Brit, he would never usurp the
privilege of the few from the Royal House.  Could it be that "we"
refers to thaxis and Chris, or thaxis and us, or Chris and Hans,
or Chris&Hans&us and even the Spoons?  It could but it would be
very odd.  After all, the Spoons have given us a pink slip.  Hans
has sent us a generous offer in which he clearly stated his
respect for our right to decide.  Thaxis?  But I have not heard
any member of thaxis claiming the right to decide on the fate
of M-G qua member of thaxis.  Actually, I haven't heard
any member of other lists saying to us as little as 'good
by' before they moved out.  And so in pursuit of clarity I
had to conclude that if "we" had any meaning short of metaphysical it
must've refered to the dead souls of our list. Now, thanks to Gogol,
this 'text' begins to make sense: Chris speaks on the behalf of
the 'silent majority,' the dead souls of our mailing list, who
do not find it "acceptable" for us, those 10%  who are still alive,
to decide how we are going to live on this list. 

Oh, immortal Gogol!

Vladimir 

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