Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 18:56:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Apology to Yudice and the Social Text Crowd


Dear Dr. Yudice,

I apologize for calling your friend Stanley fat. I also will have to 
acknowledge the correctness of your observation that Andrew's shirt 
was not really fluffy. This was mean-spirited of me and I regret the ill-
will it has caused.

Now let me try to explain the nature of our difficulties. You have 
through no fault of your own wandered onto a mailing list that is 
positively hostile toward "radical democracy", "post-marxism" and all 
the other stuff that gets heavy play in Social Text and Rethinking 
Marxism.

Let me try to fill you in on the history of marxism-international so you 
will have some context.

A couple of years ago a graduate student at Duke by the name of Jon 
Beasley-Murray started a Marxism list to go along with a bunch of 
other cultural studies oriented lists like the Foucault, Baudrillard, etc.
lists that the Spoons Collective housed. Since these other thinkers were
always bad-mouthing Marx, Jon thought it would be a good idea to open up a 
space where Marx's ideas could be critiqued by other cultural studies 
mavens like himself.

I accidentally wandered into this list with the assumption that it
was supposed to be consistent with Marx's original vision: to 
overthrow capitalism and build a socialist world. I started giving all of 
the cultural studies types a hard time and many of them left. Some 
stayed and decided to tolerate me. I had other allies in this struggle to 
make the Marxism list Marxist. One at the start was Doug Henwood, 
the pre-eminent young Marxist economist in the United States, but others 
came along.

Then about 6 months ago Louis Godena showed up with a bunch of 
supporters of the PCP ("Shining Path" as the bourgeois media calls 
them), including a high-spirited and fascinating individual by the 
name of Adolfo Olaechea who lives in London. There is a million 
dollar price on his head in Peru.

Then we had a big flame-war. Adolfo and I really went at it until I 
grabbed a brass candelabra and smacked him over the head with 
it. After we fought, we made up. This was helped by my statement that 
I supported the PCP, which I really do.

Shortly before this time, a number of the academicians who had stuck 
around on the Marxism list during this fight got annoyed with all of 
the violent rhetoric and went and formed their own list called 
Marxism-2. The people who stuck around in Marxism-1 continued 
fighting with the Maoists for a while but soon everybody was friendly.

Then M-1 got infested by Trotskyites of the most crude and ignorant 
sort. Their knowledge of Trotsky consisted of one or two paragraphs 
>from the Transitional Program which they posted nearly verbatim 117 
times a day. There was another pest of the Maoist species. He was just 
bonkers. He believed that eating Plutonium was good for you and 
reminded M-1 of this about 89 times a day.

So things had gotten out of hand.

Then we decided to start a new moderated list where we could have 
intelligent discussions about Marxist issues but without being bothered 
by nuts. The moderation consists of limiting everybody to 3 posts a day, 
which nuts find bothersome. This, of course, limits me--the biggest nut-- 
to 3 posts a day  which is good for the list. I have explained this in the
following fashion in the past. If a genie gave me three wishes, I am not 
likely to wish I wasn't so damned constipated. Nor am I likely to answer 
somebody with e-mail saying, "What kind of schmuck are you? Plutonium is
poison."

Most of the academicians stayed in Marxism-2 which has recently 
been broadened in scope and rechristened marxism-thaxis. One of those 
thaxis people has just wandered over into marxism-international. His 
name is Jerry Levy. He is the Pratt professor who tattled on Randy 
Martin to me. He is also the one who chastised me for preferring to 
read Zinoviev than trucking up to Massachussets to hear Cornel West 
and Vandana Shiva. Chacun a son Gout. The other professor is named 
Barkley Rosser, who teaches at James Madison University in 
Virginia. He has never forgiven me for calling him Barney Ross on 
another list and lives for the day to get me back, a quest somewhat like 
Ahab's search for the White Whale. Rosser wrote a book proving that the
Cultural Revolution led to cannibalism, necrophilia and other social
disorders. I have not been able to find an entry for this book in the
Columbia Library. I suspect that it is a vanity publication. Jerry Levy,
unlike Rosser and Aronowitz, has never written a book.

Now we are not really that into the Social Text/Rethinking Marxism 
thing here at all. (Maybe we should put that into our charter.) We had 
a chap by the name of Leo Casey a year or so ago who loved that 
radical democracy stuff like nobody's business. What was odd is that 
he didn't even work as a professor. Go figure. He split about the time 
of the PCP flame-wars, but I don't know where he is now.

The only other radical democrat we have now is a fellow named Carl 
Davidson who was a fire-breathing Maoist in the 1970s. "Serve the 
People" and all that kind of bullshit your know. Carl is politically very 
close to your friend Stanley now and they are both on the editorial 
board of something called cy.Rev, an electronic journal that is trying 
to arrange a shotgun marriage between the Tofflers and Karl Marx. 
Other than him, I can't think of a soul.

Our moderators, 3 of the greatest people in the world, reflect the 
direction we are going. One of them is Jon Flanders, a diesel locomotive
mechanic who lives in the hard-scrabble world of Schenectady, NY in a 
neighborhood that seems lifted from a William Kennedy novel. Another
is the prodigal son Louis Godena, a millwright who works the night-shift
and who devours journals and scholarly books at a frightening pace. He is 
probably the most knowledgable Marxist in the United States. The 
third is Zeynep, whose last name I never use, because it is a long 
Turkish name and I am getting old and forgetful. She is a computer 
professional like me but probably much more qualified. I got into the 
field in 1968 when you could still be a liberal arts dreamer.

Zeynep has an article in an upcoming Monthly Review on Turkish 
politics. She also works with a "workers school" in Istanbul which 
gives ordinary working-people an understanding of Marxist politics. 
She is a powerhouse.

So that's M-I for you. At least you know now what you've gotten into.


Very truly yours, 

Louis Proyect



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