Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Carroll: none of those posts ever bothered even to hint that perhaps we should ask Lenin's question (even if we didn't accept his answers, which fit 1905): WITBD. The absence of interest in this question; in fact the absence any hint that the question existed, pretty much convinced me that the list was only concerned with daily movement for its own sake (a la bernstein), with hopes for the future occasionally thrown in for decoration. Those of us that have been around for a while have all had occasion, often many, to hear and perhaps even participate in formulating very self-assured and categorical responses to the question of What Is To Be Done. While some may disagree, blaming the vicissitudes of their particular sect or current on objective circumstances, the perfidy of the bureaucracy (whether of the misnamed socialist countries of unhappy memory or the almost as misnamed U.S. labor movement), I believe the fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. Never mind not believing his answers a century ago apply to our situation, Lenin posed the question WITBD at a specific time, when the Russian labor movement was mature enough to make possible the drawing together of scattered elements into a genuine workers party. The conditions that would make possible the drawing together of such a party do not exist in the United States nor have they for many decades. (I leave aside the question of whether the Henry Wallace Movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Greens, the Nader campaigns or similar could have eventually opened the door or led to such a party. At any rate none of those efforts were a labor party, not even in embryo because they lacked any real or organic connection to the class movement, and that mainly because there is no politically independent class movement.) All the myths about Leninist party notwithstanding, WITBD is not about organization at bottom but rather about the relationship between the nascent party and the working class movement of which the party is the political expression. That is why despite his insistence on the need for skilled conspirators working underground (professional revolutionaries) he did not treat the RSDLP as a closed circle with only members allowed access to internal debates but rather these were carried out in public through articles in the periodical press and special pamphlets. That is because in Lenin's conception, which is the Marxist conception, the party is rooted in, grows out of the actual class movement when it reaches a certain level of development. That sort of class movement is precisely what we lack. The most eloquent testimony to the lack of conditions anything like those that led Lenin to pose his famous question is that with all sorts of socialist groups in the U.S. adopting policies of colonization of factories, industrial concentration, making their home in the working class, turning to industry, or whatever phrase the specific outfit chose in order to claim they were doing something different from everybody else, when in reality they were all doing pretty much the same thing, none of them recruited a single genuine hereditary proletarian from all their union and workplace focus, or as close to as makes no difference. Instead, the union work recruited socialists by the score into dropping their work as socialists. This is not just a question of people adopting a mask or being discrete to protect their livelihood or approaching their coworkers at a level they can understand. I believe rather it is a function of the kind of labor movement that we have, what Lenin called a bourgeois labour movement. (See Imperialism and the Split in Socialism here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm.) Attempts by socialists to seriously lead current unions have led to some more militant, combative or honest union leaderships, but has not meant a break with the bourgeois labor movement, and cannot do so under current circumstances because it is not a question of ideas in someone's head but rather social realities. Bourgeois forces are completely hegemonic in the organized labor movement. So for example, arguments in favor of political independence from bourgeois parties in unions today have a completely theoretical and unreal character, because a real party of working people does not exist. And even if you had been able to convince some local or other body to back Nader in one of his presidential campaigns, or McKinney, the real meaning of that position is that the union is trying to pressure the bourgeois parties, usually the Democrats, into making more concessions. And for all the other positions involved in the election, for Congress, state legislature, city council, etc., the unions will back the Democrat or if s/he is particularly repugnant, abstain in the given race, which has pretty much the same meaning as voting for Nader, a move to pressure the Democrats, not a break with them. A similar statement could be made about
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
In a message dated 9/3/2009 9:15:45 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, schaf...@optonline.net writes: i don't want to spend my time picking through marxmail posts looking for interesting discussions. i do want to spend time picking through interesting discussions finding pointers to more in-depth articles. FWIW, I'm with Les on this issue. We all know where to find news on the net, and there's already so much to try to keep up with on this list, that I think it would be helpful to post only enough of the article to give us the gist, and to encourage us to read it (along with the URL, of course). OTOH, I don't know much about slow connections and bandwidth issues, so I'm in favor of the greater good. It's just that what I find most interesting here are the unvarnished opinions of my comrades, rather than the polished reports of professional journalists. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Patrick Bond wrote:
I'm voting, as usual, for full posting of articles - copyrights be damned.
I agree, generally the burden of requiring *interactive* getting (by
web) of things in the context of poor connectivity is greater than the
burden of getting a large amount of redundant, but easily ignored
plain text, even in that same context.
2009/9/1 Les Schaffer schaf...@optonline.net:
i can think of two or three solutions to this problem...
1. a separate companion list for news and forwards
I forsee a lot of confusion and peopl eforwarding to the long list and
a lot of reminders and reinforcements being required to make this
work.
3. Mailman has a Topics feature which is currently disabled, see
details below. if everyone who forwarded would put a keyword like [fwd]
or [news-item] in their subject line, i think we could handle this.
That might be the most realistic solution, and the easiest to teach
people to conform to.
-AA.
--
Ambrose Andrews
LPO box 8274 ANU Acton ACT 0200 Australia
http://www.vrvl.net/~ambrose/
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voicemail:+61_261112936
work:+61_261256749
mobile:+61_415544621
irc:{undernet|freenode|oftc}:znalo
xmpp:ambr...@jabber.fsfe.org
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CE38 8B79 C0A7 DF4A 4F54 E352 2647 19A1 DB3B F823
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Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
If this is some kind of plebescite, then I also cast my vote very strongly with Patrick, for the inclusion in most cases of full text of an article rather than just an url. Frankly, sending mere urls are a waste of good comrades' time, and I agree that this is much more a problem for comrades outside the imperialist centres, though it probably also is for poorer or less tech-savvy comrades even there. Obviously that needs to be reinforced with emphasis on other protocols, ie, always including an url with the text, always clipping most of the text of the article you're replying to, and, conversely, RETAINING the small part of the text you are replying to so that readers can make sense of discussions. Several regular posters here do not do the latter, and so except for anyone reading every post, some of their replies to nothing apparently look like sheer nonsense. - Original Message - From: Ambrose Andrews ambrose-b...@vrvl.net To: Michael Karadjis mkarad...@theplanet.net.au Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 1:03 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed?? Patrick Bond wrote: I'm voting, as usual, for full posting of articles - copyrights be damned. I agree, generally the burden of requiring *interactive* getting (by web) of things in the context of poor connectivity is greater than the burden of getting a large amount of redundant, but easily ignored plain text, even in that same context. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed
Les wrote: 2009/9/1 Les Schaffer schaf...@optonline.net: i can think of two or three solutions to this problem... 1. a separate companion list for news and forwards From my standpoint, this proposal is utterly without value. My comments on the list often, and even usually take the form of comments on articles, a form of participation which Les apparently regards as not constituting discussion because a post is attached. It is my experience that posts are more often read if they are provided in full. So this is one of the ways I participate in discussion, not the opposite of discussion as Les insists. I don't do a lot of independent essay-writing, but mostly bounce off other things that I read. Sign of a half-baked mind, of course, but that's me. Separate list for discussion and articles would thus effectively paralyze a large part of my participation. The very article Les chose to target was a discussion piece, not simply the posting of an article. Les ignored that fact in his arguments counterposing articles to discussion. The approach Les suggests will tend to turn the list into a plethora of three or four line back and forth discussion a propos of nothing in particular. I think that's the road to hell. The rule Les is now making obligatory is an obstacle for my participation. But the owner owns. The moderator moderates. And we guests on their list have to follow their rules, whether they make complete sense or not. Fred YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed
I don't really see a problem with the long posts. Yesterday, for example, DNRath posted a simply extraordinary, and long, article on shipbreaking in India. The list will be poorer without these types of contributions. Speaking of contributions, several days ago in discussing railroads and development I floated to the list several ideas about development in, and the development of the revolution in Mexico. I neglected to say that much of those ideas was worked out in offlist communication with Greg McDonald, whose own analysis sparked me to begin a deeper investigation of Mexico, and whose ideas, which sounded good to me before I started that investigation, sound still better now that I'm in the midst of it. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Les Schaffer (schaf...@optonline.net) wrote on 2009-08-31 at 16:38:28 in about Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??: but i have my own opinion on this. and that is, in my opinion, the list has become way too much a news-forwarding list and much less so an interesting list for discussions. Talk to a certain L.P. who is forwarding two-thirds of articles or naked URLs and curtailing discussions. Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Lüko Willms wrote: Talk to a certain L.P. who is forwarding two-thirds of articles or naked URLs and curtailing discussions. so you are agreeing with me that we should have less forwarding and more discussion? except Lou is one of the people who forwards stuff and who actively engages in discussion on this list. i doubt anyone on this list would claim Lou is not so actively engaged. are you saying others forward articles because Lou does? if Lou stopped forwarding, others would too? the curtailing discussions must refer to when he unsubs people, which is a separate issue in my opinion. i'm with Mark Lause on this one, i would like to see more moderation in an effort to maximize discussion and minimize pissing contests and encourage forwarding to lead to discussion. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Patrick Bond wrote: I'm voting, as usual, for full posting of articles - copyrights be damned. The reason is that I sit at the base of Africa (in Durban) and I think it's fair to say that this entire continent suffers a huge digital divide in getting quick and reliable access to the internet. i can think of two or three solutions to this problem... 1. a separate companion list for news and forwards 2. modifying Mailman behavior to route forwards only to people who want them. i have some ideas on this. 3. Mailman has a Topics feature which is currently disabled, see details below. if everyone who forwarded would put a keyword like [fwd] or [news-item] in their subject line, i think we could handle this. So my vote is for comrades to be comradely, and post the entire article. If Louis needs some extra money to handle the added bandwidth for the listserve, I'll be first to pony up. hold that thought Les Mailman Topics: The topic filter categorizes each incoming email message according to regular expression filters you specify below. If the message's Subject: or Keywords: header contains a match against a topic filter, the message is logically placed into a topic bucket. Each user can then choose to only receive messages from the mailing list for a particular topic bucket (or buckets). Any message not categorized in a topic bucket registered with the user is not delivered to the list. Note that this feature only works with regular delivery, not digest delivery. The body of the message can also be optionally scanned for Subject: and Keywords: headers, as specified by the topics_bodylines_limit configuration variable. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Les Schaffer wrote: 3. Mailman has a Topics feature reading the Topics description again myself, it seems the Mailman behavior would need to be modified so that people could subscribe to news and fwded content particularly while still receiving regular postings. i would not want to require normal posts to be tagged as normal somehow. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Jeff lays out the issue well. i would like to see some discussion on it. the Subject line is a little off, the rule is not about length of posts per se (the limit is 35 kB), but the length of a post which is already available somewhere else on the web. one point: Jeff states that for the person who WANTS to read the entire article, THEIR download costs can be higher. true. the issue then becomes, DOES everyone want to read all this stuff? for people with slow downloads who do not want to read all of an article, the download costs go up without the rule. we would have to poll a majority of the subscribers to see for sure what is a win. and it may be we will revisit the rule about including entire web pages in a post. but i have my own opinion on this. and that is, in my opinion, the list has become way too much a news-forwarding list and much less so an interesting list for discussions. i have said this online several times over the last year. so my focus is on re-invigorating useful discussions on list. to send snippets of a long article is certainly a means to start a discussion. but my sense is the ratio of forwards to discussions has gone up too high. as a result, my vote is to things to limit the tendency to forward news and web pages around, and to do more to foster discussions. this is indeed a change from our earlier rationale for the rule, which was focused on bandwidth per post. Lou and I are kicking around the idea of having a companion list which would allow for forwarding of articles, web pages, news items, and so forth, that people could optionally subscribe to. to my mind, this allows everyone to forward as they like without cluttering up the discussion list for those that don't want to read all that stuff and don't want it to become the focus. anyway, please discuss the issues of bandwidth, ease of reading long online articles, difficulty parsing long posts, etc. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
At 16:38 31/08/09 -0400, Les Schaffer wrote: anyway, please discuss the issues of bandwidth, ease of reading long online articles, difficulty parsing long posts, etc. And I just wanted to correct the numbers I threw out before, when I said that the webpage (107KB) was 7 times more data than the same article sent as an email (16KB). It's much worse! I hadn't noticed, but that particular webpage (but again, this is typical) was only the FIRST of 3 containing that article; the other two parts were probably of similar length. Also, the 16KB of the email containing ALL the article's text is only 12KB longer than a one-line email (4KB). So I could safely estimate that someone will use more bandwidth viewing ONE such article on the web than receiving 20 such emails each containing the full text of such an article. (And that is just for someone whose web browser is set not to download images). Having put the bandwidth issue to rest, I will also thank Fred for copying all 3 parts of that article into one email, for MY/OUR convenience! - Jeff YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Jeff wrote: And I just wanted to correct the numbers I threw out before, when I said that the webpage (107KB) was 7 times more data than the same article sent as an email (16KB). It's much worse! I hadn't noticed, but that particular webpage (but again, this is typical) was only the FIRST of 3 containing that article; the other two parts were probably of similar length. Jeff fails to mention that one can forward a link to a printer-friendly version of the post which requires much less bandwidth. this, for example, delivers less than 24 kB, though it is dynamically generated: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=58F674B6-18FE-70B2-A8704F4CCE4DB979 and his argument does not apply to those of us who do NOT want to read all this stuff. it only applies to those Marxmailers who want to read the entirety of all these web pages. Another issue i forgot to mention earlier: inability of people to properly format a cut-and-pasted web page into their email application in such a way that the post is easily readable. this after years of coaching. But yes, more a readability issue than a bandwidth issue per se. For a clutter-free marxmail future! Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
Re: [Marxism] Long posts not allowed??
Les offers a telling comment on the potential value of the list for discussion...as opposed to the mere forwarding of electronic clippings. I've suggested in the past...and would resurrect it here...that we have particular topics for discussion at intervals. Other things could be posted, as usual, of course, but the subject for this week should be such-and-such. This would coax from lurkership the many people who have something to say and might say it, if they thought the floor was more open to their concern. Just a suggestion. ML YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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
