Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 10:38:54 -0700
From: David Stevens <phylstevens-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: M-G: Proyect on Proyect


Elsewhere, Big Mac says:
>
> I reproduce one of Louis Proyects more useful
> and enjoyable (re)posts:-

 Just for dialectical balance, I will share with this
forum (and Deja News' archives) another of Cde Proyect's
contributions, attached (with original headers) below.

 Louis published (or spewed) this on Friday to a private
mailing list he doesn't subscribe to himself.

 I should mention that Doug Henwood's list has nothing
in particular to do with Proyect's slime; LBO-talk has
a lively dialog, unmarred by the sort of personalistic
rants (like the attached) which are coin of the realm
for Louis Proyect.  But I'm grateful to Louis for offering
profuse illustrations of my original point: the poor man
cannot even moderate himself.

 I do NOT say that Louis Proyect is a cop -- nor do I even
presume to know what sort of "9 to 5 job," as Louis puts
it, offers daily remuneration for his personal attacks upon
opponents as "pedophiles," "mentally disabled," or whatever.

 Commissar Proyect's criteria for retirement seem somewhat
more rigorous than Ginrich-Clinton's capitalist America.  <brr>.

 But he doesn't explain his physical threats against opponent
Thomas Gerard Smith, Jr., of City University of New York.

 As Kevin MacLeod aptly noted last year, 

 "Proyect is not a one-man sect. 

 "He's a one-man workers state!"

 -  MacLeod, 18 December 1997 in 
    "Re: Hayek: Our Greatest Mind?" on Usenset (a.p.s.t.)
     <19971218175701.MAA29647-AT-ladder02.news.aol.com>.

- David Stevens  

------------------------------------------------------------
Received: from vera.kvalito.no ([195.119.22.11])
          by mtiwgwc01.worldnet.att.net (Intermail v3.1 117 241) with
ESMTP
          id <19980508183233.WNSS3091-AT-vera.kvalito.no>
          for <phylstevens-AT-postoffice.worldnet.att.net>;
          Fri, 8 May 1998 18:32:33 +0000
Received: from aloha.cc.columbia.edu by vera.kvalito.no (8.8.7/8.8.8) id
UAA19935; Fri, 8 May 1998 20:14:11 +0200
Received: from audi (audi.ais.columbia.edu [128.59.223.163])
        by aloha.cc.columbia.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA05809;
        Fri, 8 May 1998 14:11:52 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980508141119.006daea0-AT-popserver.panix.com>
X-Sender: lnp3-AT-popserver.panix.com
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32)
Date: Fri, 08 May 1998 14:11:19 -0400
To: phylstevens-AT-worldnet.att.net, jplant-AT-cix.compulink.co.uk,
        mclemee-AT-igc.apc.org, jschulman-AT-juno.com
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Announcing a Marxism mailing-list
Cc: marxchat-AT-leftist.net
In-Reply-To: <35534424.5DCC-AT-worldnet.att.net>
References: <memo.120049-AT-cix.compulink.co.uk>
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011
Content-Length: 4429

> You invest your time (if it's a serious forum).  For example,
>since March, I've had two articles rejected without comment
>by the current moderators [I'm not a moderator any more] of
>our T-P mailing list (in support of the ETOL).  I spent
>serious time on one of those contributions, and I truly
>did not expect either of them to bounce. 

Did it ever occur to you that people who place "sex" and "drugs" on the
same plane as Trotsky might be ill-equipped to write about Trotsky in a
serious manner? It is the same sort of idiocy that is behind naming a
'zine
Cockroach. The authors, Malecki and Stevens, can't make the connection
that
drugs, sex and filthy insects that spread disease--while interesting
topics
on their own merits--have little to do with spreading Leon Trotsky's
ideas.

>
> [FWIW to Plant: I happen to be swamped, else I should've
>written you personally offlist.  I imagine -- even expect --
>that your perspective on those questions could not have been
>sufficiently different from mine as to warrant my separate
>expression].
>

Swamped with what? You don't have a 9-5 job.

> I quite clearly do NOT consider Proyect a "class enemy."
>John, you must have missed the last entire round of the
>Mad Malecki/Horrible Holmes rantings on that very question.
>Bob Malecki said I was being "the attorney for Proyect"
>specifically because I said that Louis' slimy behavior
>in the Levy affair did NOT mean he was 'outside of the
>workers movement'.

I wish you would consider me the "class enemy" because I don't want to
have
any sort of understandings with the kind of people who are
fellow-travelers
of Frank Furedi's scabbing, pro-fox-hunting libertarian cult, that is
now
networking with the Cato Institute and Ron Arnold's crypto-fascist "Wise
Use" movement.

>
> But I have enough respect for Plant that if he thinks
>that's what I was saying, I will hereby apologize to
>Louis Proyect, and I'll cover the point when I get
>around to posting to M-G again.  I do not think that
>Louis Proyect is a "class enemy"; I merely said that
>he was a witch-hunter and a provocateur.

Provocateur? Oh, go fuck your mother. If she's dead, fuck her anyway.

>
> For the record, I am of the specific opinion that
>Louis Proyect is NOT a cop.  (I think he does that
>stuff for free, as an _amateur_).

Does what for free? Write about the early history of the Comintern?
Recruit
computer programmers to volunteer their skills to the FSLN to the tune
of
millions of dollars? So what the fuck have you been doing for the past
25
years, except sitting around your apartment, subscribing to the left
press,
smoking dope and masturbating.

>_All_ those things are much more positive than his
>McCarthyesque personal baitings, diatribes against
>the mentally disabled, and spy-catching expeditions.

This is a reference to my grilling Stevens on his cancer bullshit. I
can't
stand bullshit artists. Malecki with his single-handedly stopping Dow
Chemical from making napalm. Stevens with his excuse from joining
left-groups. They don't allow pot-smokers and he had to smoke pot
because
of chemotherapy. What a fucking joke. He smoked pot for the same reason
that millions of other couch potatoes smoke pot. It makes them feel
kinda
groovy. Much more fun than passing out leaflets to trade unionists.

>
> But running a mailing list on a subject of controversy
>is non-trivial.  Louis Proyect has not been able to
>control himself, in a public unmoderated forum, without
>making THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE against two opponents.

I said that I would slap your face if you didn't keep your trap shut.
This
is the same thing as telling Malecki I would punch him in the nose,
which I
said dozens of times. The notion of wasting hundreds of dollars to come
out
to SF to slap you in the face is absurd. I wouldn't piss on you to put
out
a fire.

>
> It is specifically because of his violent threats that
>it would surprise me very much if Comrade Proyect succeeds
>in moderating a Marxist mailing list.  The man literally
>cannot moderate even _himself_. 
>

The new mailing list, and Doug's LBO-list, is going great guns actually.
We
are keeping idiots like you, Malecki and Rodwell away. Doug threw
Rodwell
off after 24 hours. He knew better than to even try and get on mine.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)


     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---