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