Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:30:04 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: no more accusations, take it elsewhere


Lisa R writes, sensibly enough:

>> Adolfo Olaechea,
>> If you persist in this behavior, I think that you are most likely to
>> drive people away from your brand of "revolution" and all your other
>> ideas as well.  _That_ is what I call self-contradictory.  It is also
>> not welcome on this list.  It is possible that most people will not
>> listen or talk to you at all.

And Luis Q for the first time writes something I can agree with:

>[Adolfo] is raising important and basic issues
>of Marxism (On The State, the proletarian dictatorship, the class struggle,
>revolutionary violence, the role of women in the revolution, revolution
>in oppressed and imperialist countries, on contradiction, etc, etc.)
>All of us are benefiting from these discussions.

(I'm glad Luis says 'discussions' - not 'contributions'.)

Lisa, perhaps if you saw it this way it would hurt less. Despite all the
crap being talked about the end of socialism etc, the heritage of Marx and
Engels is so deeply rooted in the history of our time that it has the most
mutually contradictory extremes - anything from Pol Pot to vegetarianism.
In between are the attempts to use Marx to understand what's happening and
in a lot of cases to change things. Given Marx's own position, it's not
surprising that a lot of these attempts are organized or at least related
to organizations. This inevitably gets reflected in the discussions.

So be patient. And don't expect miracles - you can't force people to share
your views on priorities, relevance, acceptable behaviour etc. As you say
yourself, good examples and peer pressure are the constraints available.

And if you think it's a problem being selective now, just wait until we get
really international! Do a count of the non-US, non-British participants on
the List. We haven't got started yet. I'm particularly looking forward to a
lot of good stuff from Latin America itself and from eastern Europe.

Cheers,

Hugh




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