Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 16:13:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Final words


A number of people have contacted me to find out what list will 
become my new home. I'd rather not identify the e-mail address of the 
list, but it is a forum for discussion more directly related to the 
research I am currently doing around computers and socialism. It is 
the kind of place where, for example, questions about the monopoly 
character of firms like IBM and Microsoft are discussed.

Obviously I don't want to identify the list address, because I am afraid 
it too might become a platform for the following kinds of behavior:

1) hysterical ritual denunciations by the PCP of rival Maoist sects.

2) calls for endorsement of the execution of "snitches" in Peru.

3) vitriolic campaigns to label people as fascist on totally nonexistent 
evidence.

4) crude calls for WORLDWIDE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION, to 
the exclusion of just about anything else.

5) cultification of the list. Hans the knucklehead professor from the 
University of Utah is the first of the "pod people" to show up in your 
midst. Who will be next?

6) voluminous cross-posting from the New Flag publication in NY, a 
publication with a circulation in the high 3 figures.

7) an atmosphere more analogous to trench warfare than the public 
commons atmosphere that used to prevail.

8) obsequious cuddling up to hate-mongers by English psychiatrists 
who need to have their conscience and perhaps their head examined.

9) unceasing navel-gazing over "what shall we do with these 
people...Oh dear, Oh dear".

10) watching people with interesting ideas bullied into silence.

Louis Proyect

(I will also be touch with many of you on an individual basis)


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