File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-06.201, message 16


Date:         Tue, 04 Mar 97 07:53:59 EST
From: Walter Daum <WGDCC-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject:      Re: M-I: Enough, please;  ALSO, query on Lenin's practice


On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 16:50:48 -0500 (EST) Louis Proyect said:
>Paul Zarembka:
>>
>>Final query:  Does anyone have documented evidence when Lenin called for
>>purging and killing any member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor
>>Party/Bolshevik?
>>
>
>Louis Proyect:

>     [...]
>
>By the way, Zaremka, your line of questioning around this subject reveals
>you to be an utterly bankrupt individual politically. Everybody else is
>intent on discussing ideas and you in your monomoniacal fashion keep raising
>the sort of questions that Richard Pipes and the rest of the Hoover
>Institute have much better answers for. Those people make hundreds of
>thousands of dollars each year preparing answers to those sorts of question.
>The working people, graduate students and activists on this list are much
>more interested in trying to figure out how to abolish capitalism than
>sitting in judgment on leaders of the Russian socialist movement.

etc., etc.

Louis doesn't seem to have noticed that Paul was asking his question
in exactly the opposite spirit of Pipes et al. Pipes is of course an
out and out reactionary, eager to discredit the Bolshevik revolution
in every possible way. Paul's question was possibly rhetorical,
and certainly a challenge to those on the list who argue that
violence is acceptable among Marxists. Lenin was
outraged at reports of physical threats among communists, threats
made by Stalin and Ordzhonikidze, as I remember.

Louis appears to have imbibed the spirit of his Stalinist allies on
the list who labeled Paul a reactionary on the basis of his stated
opposition to the Stalinist counterrevolution. And then he launches
into another one of his tiresome personalistic tirades, which do so
much to discourage serious discussion.

Note to moderators: I am not asking that Louis be expelled or suspended.
And for that matter, I would like to register a protest against the
current suspensions. Suspensions for content, however appalling (and
Adolfo's was), whatever the intentions of the current moderators, are
a dangerous precedent. And the moderators' judgment was questionable:
Jerry Levy may have been obstreperous, but nothing he said compares with
death threats.

If this were a public meeting (of, say, the Marxist Intrnational
Society), comments like Adolfo's would likely have been gaveled down
by the chair -- if not already shouted down (or otherwise disciplined)
by the audience. But it's not a meeting, it's just a mail list, and anyone
can gavel down counterrevolutionary insults by pressing a button.

Walter Daum


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