Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 23:19:24 -0400
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <"achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu"-AT-ncsu.edu>
Subject: An Open Letter to Spoon-Administration


Dear Administrators:

As a member of Marxism1, I am writing to you to make two requests.  

	1. I need to know the approximate date when the list goes off the air. The 
reason for asking this is that I plan to write a fairly large document for my comrades 
on M1. Since this work is going to be rather strenuous and time-consuming I want to make 
sure beforehand that my effort is not going to be lost due to the closure of the list 
for which this work is exclusively intended.  

	2. My second request or inquiry is also related to this projected work. Its 
theoretical part presents some reflections on the nature of the relations between two 
sections of the present-day socialist movement: the metropolitan, primarily the U.S. 
marxist intellectuals and the communist activists, especially those from the periphery 
of the capitalist world system. This theoretical part develops around a concrete case 
study, which is the experience of M1 and the logic of the developments that have 
eventually brought about its end, as well as the restructuring of the marxist space on 
the Spoons. 

In the course of my preparatory research for this work, I came across the Archive of the 
Spoon-Administration which contains the correspondence between the Moderators and the 
Administration on a variety of issues relating to managing and monitoring M1.  Included 
is also a number of letters from some of the list participants.  This correspondence 
provides a vital part of the factual materials for the analytical part of my work. 

While it is my understanding that the archive belongs to public domain  and thus is open 
for research, I do not consider it possible to use (quote, paraphrase, or refer to) its 
contents in my work without your permission which I hereby request.

							Sincerely,

							Vladimir Bilenkin


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