Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 08:25:36 +0100 From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org> Subject: Re: M-G: On the close down of Marxism space At 06:34 PM 5/22/98 -0400, Louis P wrote: >Chris Burford: >>While I am on record as criticising Bob's contributions which I think are >>typically spart - no potential for dialogue in the criticism, just exposure >>of everything wrong in everyone else's position; Hugh will argue a mean >>argument. I have to think how to counter his reply on united fronts. > >Chris, you are really very poor at perceiving how little interest there is >in broader Marxist circles in an argument between you and Hugh Rodwell. Do >you remember when I kept writing you privately to tell you that the debate >between you, Malecki, Martens, Jay Miles and Quispe was destroying the old >Marxism list? And you didn't get it, did you. You have to appreciate that >these sorts of debates, while interesting to people like you and the other >sectarians, drive normal people to take drastic action. I don't think >anybody killed themselves as a result of the 3 month, 100 message a day, >debate over who really was the genuine voice of the Shining Path, but they >certainly did leave the old Marxism list en masse. I know you will find >this hard to believe, but that 3 month debate was for the submoronic. As a >result of it, the Spoons Collective decided to go to a moderated format. >They left you and Hans and the nuts to Marxism-General where essentially >that type of debate just picked up where it left off. In a way it was good >that M-G was created. It was a like a padded cell where noodniks like >Rodwell, Malecki and Levy could retreat to when the other lists got them in >a psychotic state. Tomorrow you and the rest of the cuckoo's will either >find a new nest or you will simply disappear. In any case, genuine Marxist >discussion will go on without you. It is interesting that at the close of marxism-general and its rebirth into something better, Louis P has been unable to keep away from a major clash with Hugh, and myself. Every list is fought over, and marxism space itself is being fought over. As Juan pointed out the participation of people to jeer at what they hoped was a dying corpse does them no credit, whatever the merits of other contributions elsewhere. There is no sympathy here in Louis's post for the dilemmas of how to run a completely open list just an argument essentially that the only good marxism list is one either moderated by Louis P or one close to his political line. Personal attack relying heavily on expressions of contempt rather than reasoned argument defeating or certainly probing a persons position at its best. This sort of jeering does indeed add to the noise that makes it difficult to distinguish useful from destructive contributions and leads people to unsubscribe and go elsewhere. I think Louis P knows that well. I think his conduct in the last weeks of the previous marxism list was consciously to create the confusion of an enormous row that Bob Malecki might be a police agent, and his excuse was that there was about as much evidence for this as there was for the Peruvian source being a police agent. Louis P largely succeeded in that strategy and the bulk of good contributions went off to the new "marxism-international" list which became the most active focus of quality reasoned marxist polemic. Now with the transfer of marxism-international to Emory, and the launch of his own list, it is a matter of record that Louis P subjected m-i to demoralising posts and in my opinion partly succeeded again in taking the majority of the volume off elsewhere. Perhaps others played into his hands. All is fair in love and war. Perhaps, but over a period of time one's conduct gets noted. Louis's criticism of me above is interesting because he does not deny my observation which he has read on a number of occasions that our political positions are similar. The attack is therefore about how to develop internet resources for marxism. Louis's approach is really as a publisher, a not-for profit entrepreneur. And he is better at that than I am. I know quite well there is not massive interest in the differences between me and Hugh about whether a "correct" interpretation of united fronts is a united front of organisations or a united front of classes. Louis P has consciously and with some success sussed out the (not-for-profit) market of current intelligent interest in marxism, tapped it and serviced it, and expanded it. Good luck. He is something like a host in a talk show. He knows how to move the subject on. How to startle. How to engross. How to challenge. Recently he nonchalantly referred to himself tossing a few grenades into a list. I am often deliberately boring to those with short attention span. We are talking about the same contrast. Louis writes sparkling English. I write convoluted contradictory English. About handling these debates Louis once said pithily: Chris Burford puts out flame wars; I start them. That does indeed sum up a lot of the difference. His challenge to me here on the last day of marxism-general about the end of marxism, obscures a frank acknowledgement of what he was trying to do with marxism-general, and leaves him open to the charge of opportunism. He tried to make out that it was Chris B who destroyed lists. During his brief and ill-judged (on both sides) rapprochement with Jerry Levy this consisted of two main features 1) an unwise sharing of confidences without basic trust being in place about the authorship of the Sokal hoax 2) a conviction that Chris B destroys lists. Something that Jerry unwisely quoted on thaxis. Whether I succeeded in destroying thaxis is a matter of observation. Whether I succeeded in destroying marxism-international is also a matter of observation. Why Louis P stirs up and enflames flame wars is that he personalises them and is imprecise in his criticism and shifts his ground as the heat rises. The ideological reason is that he never learned that the purpose of criticism in any developed marxist culture is to correct, warn, and help the comrade and others. For Louis P criticism is to destroy. I am quite explicit about my tactics on an open list, and so long as people are not panicking or merely furious, I think they are shared by the great majority of people of good will who post. To try to illuminate the problem, not to fry the individual. It is opportunist of Louis P to trivialise the extremely difficult situation where two different Peruvian sources claiming to represent a determined armed struggle being waged under very complex conditions of counter-attack by security services of the country, and almost certainly imperialist agencies, got into an extremely intense flame war in public on the predecessor of this list. Whatever the truth behind this and which one rightly has the confidence of the revolutionaries fighting in Peru and which one might have been a police agent, we may rightly never know. Both sides have refused to repeat this experience. And it is a matter of record which side appears to have the more authoritative reports from Peru. My position was that indeed that flame war was extremely difficult for an open list. The options were to say nothing and hope it would burn out, with or without leaving the list. To leave the list IMO would be to acquiesce in the idea that an open marxist list is impossible. That appears to be at its most principled what Louis P is arguing today even though clearly everyone has learned from that negative experience. My view was that it was liberal for everyone to stand aside and I consistently argued against the assertions that Quispe was a police agent *on the basis of the evidence available to ordinary list members* and against the inflammatory accusations by a Swedish subscriber, Rolf Martens, that he was. That position was correct and honourable. Another struggle I had at the time, was with a Maoist supporter of Quispe, Gina, who defended the economic policy of the Cultural Revolution when I criticised it. That exchange was also of little interest to the majority perhaps, but completely in order and IMHO relevant again. I have recently raised the subject again. The dangerous flame war over Peru was investigated by the New York Transfer Collective at Blythe who might be in the closest position to be able to know background details about the names quoted and they definitively stated they saw no evidence beyond that of a serious flame war. [NB that does not of course mean there is not other evidence - but perhaps rightly if such evidence exists it is not being made public. It is the prerogative of the Peruvian people and the fighters in Peru to decide who represents their fight, and about whom there may be grave security considerations.) It is a feature of the opportunism in glossing over all these issues as some sort of hopeless subjective muddle that Rolf has been arguing that marxism-general should move to Blythe while maintaining that I am a police spy overwhelmingly on the grounds of material he wrote 18 months ago that because I was defending this agent of being a police spy, I must be a police spy myself. Louis's personalised jeering now illustrates how it was people like him who added to the confusion instead of helping to clear it up. That does no credit to him. My reading is that Louis is indeed more successful in sussing out what the majority of current subscribers are interested in, and good luck to him. He continues to write sparkling English. We are moving to a pluralist culture a network, where his contribution may mature into, who knows, a sort of internet journal similar in perspective to Monthly Review. What he cannot demonstrate by personalised attacks is that the development of internet marxism is helped by censoring out political views you do not like, rather than by addressing them at their best and criticising them where you think appropriate by really trying to understand them, and by reasoning, and by ideological argument as I am doing here. Marxism does not need to fear reality, not sects, nor dogmatism, nor opportunism, nor provocateurs, who come with the task. It is a matter of record IMHO that I (as well as others) confronted "Murray" on this list, as well as on thaxis effectively and with relatively little effort. Louis's dramatics, while justified, complicated the situation and alarmed people. In summary Louis's 11th hour personal attack, while having an element of truth to it, that he is a far cannier publisher than I am, cannot undermine the relevance of marxism-space having an open, unmoderated list, provided enough people of good will, with some knowledge of marxism, are prepared to work in it constructively, and to support it. Hans has made the technical offer on the basis I am sure of a lot of hard work in the background. Lets make it work! If Louis wants to demonstrate that he can help it work too, so much the better. If he thinks however he will build the credibility of his own list by spoiling tactics, I suggest that will probably be counterproductive. Chris Burford London. --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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