Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 04:03:24 -0600
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Stop the madness!


What the hell is going on here? Are we turning into another
alt.politics.radical-idiocy or
alt.politics.socialism.trotskyist-sectarian.mindless.flamewar.hell?
Now Justin is gone too. Peter Burns is gone. I haven't seen anything from
Paul Cockshott in a while. Does freedom of speech mean we have to allow
ourselves to be swamped by a rising tide of mediocre inanity? We're in a
catch-22 situation here. Any measures that might have a chance of success
by the same token are tantamount to censorship (I assume we want to respect
the spirit and not just the letter of freedom of speech; I know I do).
Personally, I have no problem deleting huge amounts of drivel; I sometimes
even read it to indulge my scatophilia. I certainly understand why others,
especially those not blessed with a Macintosh and Eudora Light, feel
impelled to unsub, but it pisses me off. As always, the effect of
bombarding people with vicious nonsense is not to make anybody with any
sense listen to it, but simply to drive out anything decent, intelligent,
or human, and to isolate the people who won't buy what they're (and you all
know who I mean) selling.

I imagine that this is one of the kinds of situations that we have (non)
moderators for. I understand why so few have sought to stop this nonsense,
though; how do you reason with a Stalinist? Anyway, I will now briefly
arrogate to myself the awesome mindbending power of a co-(non)mod and make
a few suggestions. First of all, I think the only measure that is at least
formally short of censorship that might work is if all of us (who is the we
I'm talking about here; that's part of the problem) agreed simply not to
respond to THEM. I don't like this because it is even more of a coercive
act than the spamming that drove Justin away (it wouldn't be if we all
happened independently to decide that, but in the natural flow of things
all of us feel impelled to answer them from time to time). I'm definitely
not suggesting this, but I think it's necessary to fight back while there's
still a semblance of substantive content on the list. To that end, I have
some suggestions:

Louis, I understand why you said you want to further the dialogue with the
PCPers. I also think the facts about PCP atrocities could use some clearing
up. But we're up to our necks here. Inundate us with long treatises on
McCarthyism, Cuba, the potential for fusion of environmentalism and
socialism, and anything else that comes up, like you used to.

Lisa, I know you're angry. You've complained about the list several times
recently. Unfortunately, the problems won't listen to you; they're not here
for dialogue, just to bombard us with their rhetoric. Help us to synthesize
modern biological/anthropological thought with Marxian political economy to
create even more powerful analytical tools.

Jerry, stop fighting with Louis. Don't rearrange deck chairs on the
Titanic. Write about Marxist economics. There may not be too many of us
left who are professional economists or worth your while to talk to, but
maybe if you start some threads you'll find some of us have something
interesting to say, even if we didn't know it beforehand.

Ralph, be yourself. No one else can.

Leo, keep 'em coming. Right now, your posts are some of the few that are
truly interesting and sensible. Tell us what the hell your conception of
radical democracy is. I think Marxism (at least the nonacademic kind)  has
never adequately theorized what democracy should mean. Let's talk about it.

Doug, bury us under a load of useful statistics.

Rakesh, you're probably halfway through the Library of Congress by now.
Spread some of the wealth around; some of us are never going to read all
that ourselves.

Justin, come back.

Chris, stop trying to be psychoanalyst for the list and to "facilitate
dialogue." You used to write some interesting stuff.

The rest of the white hats: As above.

SECTARIAN FLAMEBAITING STALINISTS: We're a bunch of fake leftists. Not only
are we not good enough to talk to you, we're not even good enough to read
what you write. Until you can find a truly worthy audience, you might want
to look into creating a list of your own, so you can recognize each other's
genius.

I also have a lot of suggestions for myself, but I'll leave it to the
passage of time to make them evident.

Rahul Mahajan (now resigning as co-non-mod)



Better a fake leftist than a fake human being.

Rahul Mahajan c. March 1996. (May be used in any forum for any purpose,
with attribution)




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