File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 176


Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 07:54:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: Re: My protest to the moderator was Re: M-I: Cheap Trotsko/fascist historiography



Gary writes:

>Well Mr. Godena - are you happy now?   Do you think we need this on the
>list? More of this abusive torrent of Maoist rubbish. Christallmightyjesus
>we have been down this path before.  Does anyone apart from your self think
>that there are any great theoretical insights to be gained from listening
>while *poor* Adolfo goes around banging the Stalin drum and labelling us
>all trots and fascists?
>
>You are now the sole moderator and it is a deep shame that you have not
>been able to restrain your contempt for most of us.  


Your last point first, Gary; I am *not* the sole moderator.  There are two
others; Gay Harley and Dennis Grammenos, though they have not been involved
in forwarding the offending posts.  That was my decision alone, the reasons
for which I have been over again and again, *ad nauseum*.

I did not see Adolfo's latest post before it appeared on
marxism-international, forwarded, I think, by Jay Miles.  Yet, I would have
in all likelihood forwarded it to the list.  It was, after all, a direct
response to an historical analysis produced by Lou P, and concerning an area
in which Adolfo is admittedly expert, modern Latin American politics.
Further, it raised a number of issues which have *not* been discussed, for
example, the role of Browderism and its effects on Left thinking in the
'thirties and 'forties.  Too, it seriously challenged the view that the
Comintern was a monolith were all decisions came directly from the office of
Josef Stalin; recent scholarship, especially, has shown, decisively, that
this is not the case.

Gary, I receive most of the periodicals produced by the American Left, but I
hardly ever read them, honest.  They travel straight from my mailbox to the
garbage can.  Do you know why?  Largely because they contain the kind of
stuff that is produced by the Robert Maleckis and Rolf Martens of our
planet. Rambling, sloppy, petulant, containing nothing that is new or fresh
or provocative, providing a mere paper trail for a Left peopled by morose,
dysfunctional adults repeating like parrots slogans and ideologies that
sound, increasingly, more and more lunatic.  I find Adolfo a refreshing
exception.  

Gary, you and Lou and Malecki and Bedggood are going to have to get used to
the idea that, on m-i at least, *everything* gets discussed.  There are no
sacred cows.  When I read Dave calling for a "permanent revolution" or
Malecki signing on as "Radiotime", or Andy Austin urging us to return to the
moral reasoning of Kant, or our mutual friend telling us that the Comintern
was a monolith, I think; they can't be serious.  But, they *are* serious,
they are part of the crazy quilt of idea and argument that comprise our
impoverished but vibrant left culture.  As such, they are welcome on
marxism-international.

But, by the same token, how can I endorse their being here, and not at the
same time extend that courtesy to my friend Adolfo?

Louis Godena,
co-moderator    



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