Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 20:08:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: Louis P & custard pies


On Wed, 1 May 1996, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> 
> Why do you always slip into such vulgar, personal tirades? Not that I'd
> dream of unsubbing you for it. Your own image as 'a serious revolutionary
> rather than a scribbler' would be helped no end if you could control the
> habit.
> 

Louis: Hugh, I work very hard to make a contribution to this list. I work 
at an institution that has a research library and I do the best I can to 
gather the best information I can from it to raise the political level of 
the list. Malecki doesn't have access to these resources but he does have 
access to a very important resource that he seems to be little interested 
in: the politics of Sweden.

The very first time he appeared on the list he wrote a pretty thoughtful 
piece about the crisis of Social Democracy and that was the end of it. 
Every single other post has been about how he singlehandedly ended the 
war in Vietnam, how miserable his circumstances as a youth were (it comes 
across as Monty Python and a bad parody of Oliver Twist at this point) 
and endless tirades against every throwing up roadblocks to revolution 
(ie, everybody on the list besides him).

The truth is concrete.

I try to be as concrete as possible when I write about beef or Nicaragua. 
I can't ask Malecki to rise to this level since he doesn't have the 
resources. All I would ask is that he write about something that he has a 
little bit of knowledge about: Sweden. That's the first thing. Next I 
would ask him to drop the whole "Malecki in exile" shtick. It is boring 
and obnoxious beyond belief. No individual did anything to stop the war 
in Vietname. It took the efforts of organizations, including the one I 
belonged to, to end the war. Marxism is about collective action and his 
constant reminder of how important *he* is flies in the face of what 
socialism is about: collective action.

Finally, he should put a moratorium on picking fights with people. Nobody 
is better at this than me. But I know how to lighten up from time to 
time. He is flailing away at what seems like 37 people at once. This is 
unneccessary, isn't it?

Tally-ho, yoicks and all that sort of thing, old spot,

Louis


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