File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9708, message 6


From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph-AT-indigo.ie>
Subject: M-I: Fw: The Swamp
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 11:58:31 -0700




----------
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
To: Karl Carlile <joseph-AT-indigo.ie>
Cc: marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: The Swamp
Date: 31 July 1997 09:17

Karl Carlile wrote:
> 
> Hi Vladimir!
> 
> I read with interest your very recent post concerning Rolf's
postings. Forgive my
> ignorance but I did not know that you and Rolf refused to join the
other marxism lists.
> Would you please explain to me what you mean by the "swamp".




Hi Karl,

	Sorry I couldn't answer you sooner.  What do I mean
by the "swamp"?  The easy way would be to say that they are
a group of people who from the very beginning of the Spoons
marxism list held an informal power over its turf.  They did 
this by "hegemonic" means, by constructing a "public opinion"
and using psychological, intellectual, and, increasingly,
administrative pressures to intimidate and to silence those
participants whom they saw in any way capable of threatening
their control of the list, which they considred their birth right,
 and the established discursive parameters the swamp found 
acceptable. 

In short, the swamp is inherently opportunistic or, to use
Lenin's term, "disloyal" to the cause they profess to support,
because they put their power interests above all political
principles. The worst defeat for them is a "literary" one.
For it is the literary, the rhetorical, the affective -and not 
the power of ideas -  that is their conventional power tool
in the Net.  

But this is an easy answer.  It lies on the surface of things
by considering this group of people in isolation from a broader
framework of their social existence of which their virtual one 
is just a symptom.  To answer your question, then, is to 
investigate not the "literary" but the real, material sources
of their power that they've been always able to hold despite 
occasional crushing defeats and self-exposures.  The process of
such investigation is like peeling off an onion or seeing what's
inside of a Russian "matr'oshka" doll. It would establish first 
that the strength of this group is rooted in their being 
representatives of the Western marxist left establishment. Which
would immediately posit a question: Where there lies the latter's
source of power?  My hypothesis is that it lies not in their non-
existent link with the working class but in them being an integral,
even if very special, part of the late bourgeois superstructure.
This is where their "political unconscious" is located.

The next step in our hypothetical investigation would be to see
if the history of this group in the Spoons "marxism space" would
indeed provide some evidence that the above hypothesis is not
entirely out of question;  that whatever understanding of themselves
this group of people has --and I never doubted that they were
entirely sincere in this respect -- they, nevertheless, (or more 
exactly, precisely because of this)-- effectively serve as a 
mediating link between this "space" and the "spaces" of
the entirely opposite political nature.

I believe that the history of m1 contains irrefutable
evidence of this sort.  It shows how step by step the swamp
strengthened the ability of the outside forces to control
and manipulate the activities of those few participants who
indeed presented a degree of danger for the ruling class.
I repeat, this should not be understood in a vulgar, mechanistic
way.  It is only if we take into account this history as a whole
and in conjuncture with the paralel social-political developments 
in the real world, the social nature of and the role played by
the "technical personel" (the Spoons), the misty links of the
latter with the institutions that made possible this "technical"
assistance and who's own very existence in turn  depends entirely
on their not so misty links to real sources of power-- only then
we can hope to understand the social nature and the role of the
"swamp", as well as to appreciate those of the marxist left
establishment in general.

Regards,

Vladimir


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