Re: [L-I] Whither the List?

[Macdonald Stainsby]

> Let them talk up their positions in their own style as they will, and
> then respond as was being done most effectively by several commentators
> before this breakdown began.
>
> I suggest an amnesty be declared.
>
> Tony Abdo

Tony, if this list was the mouthpiece of elists for a revolutionary society, then I
would agree with you. But it isn't. if you go to egoups and look up ISKRA and
"Proletarism" you will find their lists. I felt very, very troubled about what had
happened last night until I did that. I found lists that had 312 people and
aproximately 200 something. They were posting now not on just the KPRF but also the
Russian Communist Workers Party. Both are three parter anti-semetic `warnings'. The
only people who post there are Steve Meyers, a man named Ben Seattle and their
circle. The debates were actually around Bob Malecki.

Picture this not as a party, but an embryonic meeting of those participants who are
trying to build one. There is likely to be a Spart contingent or something similar
that comes in to the meeting. If they do all the shouting at other people of similar
views until *that becomes the meeting itself*, the meeting gets nowhere, good people
go home early, and nothing at all about our situation is learned except a need to
find a way to organize without the sectarians. yes, it's email and people can delete
them "unheard", but these people will shout insults at the entire floor.

There is no bridging the gap with such folks.

Macdonald Stainsby


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RE: [L-I] Whither the List?

[Mark Jones]

Tony, I agree with most of your remarks, and I'm glad you're here and also that you
are struggling heroically at Solidarity.

In particular I agree that "the phobic iSWor/
> Kagarlitsky crowd" is just a front. You're right: they "trumpet within the Left
> of the  imperialist bloc countries a hysterical fear that a Russian 'Red
> -Brown' uprising is the  world's greatest menace" and this is "thoroughly
> repugnant and reactionary. "

However I also agree with what Lou said the other day: that people who are active on
a list, must share some kind of basic commitment to the purpose of the list. People
who are actually fronting imperialist, anti-working class propaganda, who are just
stooges, obviously do not share this commitment to leninism. It is not searching for
purity that motivates me to want to draw a line, but the fact that it is impossible
to have any kind of serious discussion while this trench warfare is going on. The
fact that the miscreants have gone does not necessarily mean that we shall now get
serious debate, because that depends on the energy and input of the rest of us. But
it is surely a start.

It is noteworthy that people like Doug Henwood and Slavoj Zizek - cynical
opportunists and leftwing careerists - have starting talking again about Lenin. I
think this is because people sense that things like an economic slowdown or
recession, combined with the incoming Bush regime, are going to sharpen social
tensions, increase workplace struggles and polarise politics etc. I'm sure they are
quite cynical about this: they think there is a political cycle just like the
business cycle, and probably in lockstep with it. In a recession you have to sound a
little more militant, otherwise you start to look stale and uninteresting. Doug H.
is a great one for finding out where the "mainstream" is, and his antenna work. On
the one hand, it's fine that people are talking more militantly; but on the other,
it makes it all the more important that we don't let these people, who are our
political enemies, drown out the real message about what is a real revolutionary,
leninist politics. To do this, we have to have some kind of material base or
presence, and an elist is one possibility (there are others, obviously). If we were
a leninist party, we wouldn't let anti-leninists or imperialist stooges in. So why
should we let them in here, since this is the workshop or foundry where we have to
try and forge new theory, analysis etc?

I agree that there is a fine distinction between censorship and liberal
over-indulgence -- lenin himself talked about that all the time and in the excerpts
I just posted from Lenin on the press + media, you can see clearly how he saw the
problem. And it was never solved in the USSR. And the death of real debate
practically guaranteed the eventual death of the Soviet state itself. However
Lenin's position was simple: any accommodation between the USSR and the encircling
capitalist powers was bound to be illusory and transient, and war to the death was
inevitable in the long run. In *that* situation, the party monopoly of power and
control of the press was essential for survival; so here is an insoluble
contradiction or paradox. If you monopolise power, you guarantee corruption,
political senility and bureaucracy. If you permit pluralism, OTOH, you're dead just
the same only quicker. The only sure way out of the impasse is to *beat the enemy*,
ie destroy world capitalism. That IS the only way.

We're not trying to make believe that an elist can be a workers' party, let alone a
wrokers' state, but it is important that we do what Lenin wanted to do in 1901, in
WITBD: to draw a line between ourselves and the others. Before you unite, you have
to split: you have to get ideological and political clarity. That is what we should
be trying to do here. Get clarity. It is still possible to debate Myers etc, and
even possible to invite them back (btw, it was the moderators who unsubbed them, not
me). If it was me, I'd argue the shit out of the sods, but I'm damn sure they'd soon
run away anyway, they always do. You wouldn't need to expel them. But then you
really would get a gigantic flame war. I'm particularly good at that, but what's the
point? Nothing is achieved that way.


mark


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[L-I] Whither the List?

[Tony Abdo]

To the remaining list moderators
I would argue that this search for list purity of purpose is the prime
destroyer of lists.Not flame wars.

I happen to share the opinions expressed by Mark about the phobic iSWor/
Kagarlitsky crowd.  I find their desire to trumpet within the Left
of the  imperialist bloc countries a hysterical fear that a Russian 'Red
-Brown' uprising is the  world's greatest menace, to be thoroughly
repugnant and reactionary. 

To be totally blunt, iSWor is an effort to get the Left of the
imperialist countries mobilized into support of direct imperialist
interventionism against Russia. And Meyers/ Kagarlitsky find support
in places like Znet, Green Left Weekly, Socialist Action, and many other
Left political parties and forums.

So why on earth would the moderators of L-I want to expel this tendency
off the list where they can be easily (and willingly!) confronted?
And debated in front of a fairly neutral forum?

I've heard this line spouted so many times in Left circles that it makes
me ill.  It goes like this

They have the right to argue their point of view, but they should do
it in the 'right' way. By their actions they brought this down on
them.

Now, to answer Mark's question. No, Mark, you would not be welcome
on the Solidarity list. And neither am I.But they have neither
thrown me out of Solidarity, nor off the list.And I frequently, and
most vociferously, deride the fact that Solidarity has devolved from a
Leninist foundaion, into ANTI-Leninism today.

Moderators of this list should provide the same grudging courtesy to
Steve and Owen that Solidarity has shown itself capable of providing to
me.  Lord knows they hate doing it.

Let them talk up their positions in their own style as they will, and
then respond as was being done most effectively by several commentators
before this breakdown began.

I suggest an amnesty be declared.

Tony Abdo  


_
  Mark

me
I would urge the moderators to control their 'piss', and resub these 3
individuals. 

 
Mark










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