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On 11/04/2010 23:06, Louis Proyect wrote: > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== > > > From Rees's "How to start a new left wing group: the rules": > > Avoid the words socialist, communist, Marxist, workers and Party when > coining your group's name. It is the 21st century. > > full: > http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/blogs/66-luna17-activist/4573-how-to-start-a-new-left-wing-group-the-rules > Just to be clear, that was written by a Newcastle-based member of the /Counterfire/ group named Alex Snowdon rather than by John Rees himself. It appears on /Rees's Pieces/ (/Counterfire/'s cognomenclature in the UK), I suspect, because the site features almost everything written on its' members blogs. To answer your question, it may be that Alex read your blog, and decided to take that advice. However, I suspect what is more likely is that he is making fun of how ridiculous new sects look when they take to rationalising a series of choices forced on them by circumstances beyond their control, and then offere these as a series of pat 'rules' that anyone forming a new leftist group can follow. Hence, dropping newspapers only makes sense if you don't have a grassroots network or a trade union base - otherwise it's actually not possible to build an active membership without the face-to-face interaction that paper sales provide. Having a "sense of perspective" about how "tiny" you are is only comforting if your membership is not much above sixty - usually, having a "sense of perspective" entails being realistic about your capacities, not soothing one's soul about the poverty of said capacities. Rediscovering the "ABC of your tradition" and not slagging off the party you've just left is only appropriate if you have just left a party and wish to stake a claim to its "tradition" (cf Lindsey German's summation of the principles of said tradition: "bending the stick", "seizing the key link in the chain" and "the polemic"), while at the same time constantly slagging off the party you've just left in thinly veiled terms for having abandoned said "tradition". Avoiding the words "socialist", "workers" etc is only appropriate if either a) the group you intend to set up has nothing to do with revolutionary socialism, or b) you believe that people who might be put off by mention of socialism can be deceived into joining a marxist group. The rest is just filler, and ruins what is otherwise a very witty satire on the grandiose delusions of grand-standing personality cults. He should have called it "Hot Sects! Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RCP". -- Richard Seymour Writer and blogger Email: leninstombb...@googlemail.com Website: http://www.leninology.blogspot.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/leninology Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seymour_(writer) Book: http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/seymour_r_the_liberal_defense_of_murder.shtml ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
