Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:14:27 -0600 (MDT)
From: hans despain <HANS.DESPAIN-AT-m.cc.utah.edu>
To: marxism2-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: Discrimination and the OPE list


Juan,

Personaly i find some sympathy for your cliam of discrimination, there 
are certainly differences in communcation between these cultures.  
However, i would serious doubt there are discrimination toward your ability.

And, at the same time there are contradictions involved on your part 
Juan.  Why would you want to be a member of a forum which you yourself 
say you oppose?  This contradiction reappears with every message.  Also, 
you first accuse OPE, but then you yourself question the ability and 
intention of particular list members.

My personally thought is this: within capitalist relations and with the
constrainsts of e-mail communcation, there is a desperate need for closed 
lists.  And we should be supportive of these projects (of course we 
should also air our protests [hopefully consistently]).

There are a number of people i correspond with on a private level, i do 
this for a number of reasons.  i see closed lists as an extension of 
private communcation.

In any event, my motivation to respond to Juan, is twofold, one i too 
have been "rejected" as a member of OPE, and two there is some relevance 
here for the future and direction of M2.

Maybe we should consider constructing a second "closed" list.  Maybe 
Jerry would be willing to help us out with this?  Second, how could we 
bring more of such discussions to an open forum.

With respect to the latter, maybe we should consider Rakesh's idea of a 
list (was that forwarded to M2?).  His ideas was to discuss capital; 
mainly (if my memory serve me right) to discuss work that followed 
Marx's *Capital*.  This could be like a seminar list on different books.  
Rakesh of course is interested in Postone, but we could also discuss 
Meszaros's *Beyond Capital* etc., etc.  (Actually Rakesh's idea basically 
received approval as a new list, but Rakesh does not have the time to 
moderate such list).

We could further set it up such list to discuss published and working 
papers of members.  This is something we have negelected (and i am 
currently negelecting, but i will return to you Chris!).  This is a great 
opportunity to interact with many serious thinkers, and doing this in 
an open forum is quite important.

In any event we sould be discussing the direction we are to take, and 
what we would like to see accomplished on an open forum; and if there is 
a need for another closed forum.

hans d.


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