On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 17:01:46 +0100 Paddy Hackett [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
Perhaps you only say this Hans because I have highlighted what may be
the
hidden strategy. Get rid of the smallest mailing lists then proceed
to the
bigger ones. It is strange that you should want to close down the
Communism
List at a period when there is a global financial crisis and the
probable
prospects of more individuals questioning capitalism.
Perhaps we should let Hans, if he is so inclined detail
the reasons that he might have for wanting to close
down the Communism List.
Concerning list names, if communism is a liability
for a list name, then wouldn't the same be true for
Marxism? I doubt that very many red baiters would
be likely to draw fine distinctions between Marxism
and communism.
As to the issue of whether a list's archives should
be publicly available, there are arguments that
can be made for either side of the question.
As Hans well knows, we have had at least
a couple of occasions when former posters
to the Thaxis list wanted their old posts
to the list archives removed or modified,
so the authors could no longer be identified.
Hans has acceded to these requests, which
I think he was correct to do given the circumstances.
But the whole thing makes me a bit uneasy since
too much of that sort of thing would undermine
the integrity of the list archives, in which case
why bother to have public archives for the list.
(And for anybody out who doesn't know this
already, all posts to Thaxis are publicly archived,
and they do get picked up by search engines
like Google_.
The Communism
List has
existed for years and has been a quiet list for some time years now
yet you
never in all that time, except now, questioned the validity of the
lists.
If I recall correctly Spoon initially got rid of a specific Marxist
list and
then eliminated others so that there were none left. Yet they left
that
strange Foucault List its server. This is Duke University --I
think.
Actually, that was the University of Virginia. Back in the
early 1990s they set up the Spoons lists for the sake of
the humanities departments at the university. These
lists were mainly devoted to various postmodern
thinkers and concerns, but since it is impossible
to discuss postmodernism without reference to
certain Marxist thinkers like Althusser, they
decided to include a Marxism list to round things
out, with the intention that list would simply be
limited to discussions of academic Marxism.
What they didn't expect to happen would be
that the list would start drawing people who
were activists or ex-activists in various groups.
Thus, over time that list began drawing Maoists,
Trotskyists, ex-Trotskyists etc. to it. And
these people brought with them many of
their old squabbles which led to many heated
discussions. Over time, what was just one Marxism
list became several different lists, which came to
include a Marxism-International List, a Marxism-Science
list, a Marxism-Feminism list, a Marxism-General list,
as well as this list. Several of these lists featured
some very bitter infighting which drove the
members of the Spoon Collective to distraction,
until they decided to unload themselves of the
whole thing back in 1998.
Paddy
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
ehrbar
Sent: 04 October 2008 22:53
To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
Cc: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] communism mailing list
There is no danger that I will close down marxism-thaxis.
Hans.
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