Sabri, I think you raise a jolly good question. My experience with these things is that clearly conveying a sense of purpose is important, which has two parts, being clear about the aim of the list, and then conveying that clearly to users, so they know what it is for and what it is not for. Apart from that, you investigate how the list is actually utilised, what people actually do get out of it (is it a resource ? is it provocative ? is it stiimulating ? etc.), what their impression is (if you want to get really thorough about this, you can of course do a quick survey). If you want to pick up new subscribers or get into new discussions, you may need to shift your objectives, or rethink your themes (what can we talk about/what should we talk about). I have some other stuff to do now, and cannot write much more anyway, maybe if I exit, this makes room for others to enter.
(As regards Ellen Wood, I am personally not anti-Wood, she is a socialist, and I think she does a lot of important and very good work defending Marx's historical approach and providing heuristics for budding scholars and activists. I just find that a lot of writing about "empire" and ""imperialism" these days combines references to empirical/historical reality with literary metaphor, as a sort of response to postmodernist reflexivity, in order to provide an intellectually and artistically satisfying presentation -which is more scholastic than tied to any political project or economic/cultural reality or experience; and then the motives for imperialism research become somewhat hazy, and the monstrous effects of imperialism appear in a footnote. For the rest of it, I have not read Wood's book, and therefore cannot comment on its merits). You may find this quote by Robert Kennedy interesting, both for the sense in which it is false, and the sense in which it says something true: "What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." These days of course, the Right is in practice far more extreme than the Left, but it is just Kennedy's thought, you may wish to consider. Idealistic people often project an imagined, wished-for solidarity with other people, which doesn't appear to exist in reality when an attempt is made to establish it practically, as I discovered through great personal disappointment and in making my own mistakes in reaching out to others. People mainly want to know what you know or what your experience is, and then move on. My own heterodox socialist interests actually deviate from 99 percent of the Left that I know, in methods, concepts, personalities and language, but I have never found a group yet where I feel "at home" in that sense. That's also why I felt interpellated by your remarks just now. Best, J.
